Comfort Food
PART III of My Trans Body Longs for Love and Salt
This is the third and final installment of “My Trans Body Longs for Love and Salt,” by Lira Green1: a three-part serialized story brought to you week by week. If you haven’t yet read Parts I: Pickle Cravings and II: Sharing Meals, go back and start there.
If you enjoy this story, we and Lira invite you to support trans life beyond the page by donating to Trans Lifeline or another organization in your area that advocates for trans and nonbinary communities.
As Lira Green traces her shifting relationship to food as a trans lesbian — through transition, first courtship, and heartbreak — she is faced with questions about how gender shapes taste. Do our bodies crave the same things? And when we do, do we taste them the same?
By Lira Green for our BODY issue
PART III: Comfort Food
Elena avoided me for the rest of the night. Even as I lay in bed texting her, my arm was warm, like she was still holding me. I cautiously asked her about her recent decision to get back on dating apps, and she said that she'd changed her mind and would rather meet someone in person. Somehow, she explained, she didn't feel as hopeless about it anymore.
I wasn't sure what to think.
There would be moments when she’d say strange things, like that I’d look good in her clothes, and yet also moments of incredible distance. My normally bashful friend, who could barely survive an oral presentation, would light up and call out my name every time I walked into class, even in a dead-silent room. When I told her a hair bow she wasn't sure suited her was cute, she wore one every day for the rest of the semester.
As Valentine’s Day approached, Elena started ruminating that she was too undesirable to find love, and it shattered my heart. I found a little box of strawberry-flavoured sweets that I hoped wouldn't be too much — chocolates were too overtly romantic, I’d decided — and gave it to her on Valentine’s Day after class. I expected her to be a little flattered and gently rebuff me. Then we could return to being friends like always.
“Is this for Gal-entine's Day?” she asked, looking in the bag.
My face flushed with warmth. “No, it’s for Valentine’s Day.”
Elena thought for a moment, then looked right at me and smiled. She was sorry, she said, that she hadn’t gotten me anything, but she’d bring me something the next time she saw me.
That night, Elena texted me, saying that she was miserably lonely and planned to spend Valentine’s Day weekend getting drunk. I was already drunk, so I asked if she wanted to do something with me, then went to press my burning face into a pillow. That was way too forward! I knew she'd reject me; my offer was too obvious to be taken platonically.
Instead, she invited me to drink with her, though she cautioned, I'd have to stay the night. My cheeks flamed with heat as I told her I wouldn’t mind, but the next moment, she changed gears and suddenly suggested we could go to the mall for bubble tea. I accepted enthusiastically, struggling to think through a haze of alcohol and confusion and blind hope. A date? Was it a date?
I tried to ask Elena whether she still wanted me to get drunk with her, but she didn’t seem to want to talk about it and I didn’t want to be pushy, so I dropped the topic. Later, I would realize that as far as I knew, Elena only drank with women she planned to kiss.
By the time I’d done my eyeliner, picked out my most colourful skirt, and parked at the dorm to pick Elena up, I’d mostly talked myself out of the idea that this could be anything more than a platonic outing. Then Elena got in my car and handed me a heart-shaped box of chocolates and a case of Ferrero Rochers. For me. I didn’t hear most of her bashful explanation, besides that she’d picked out a box she thought I’d like, and that she hoped I liked hazelnuts.
I did.
We wandered through the mall, laughing. Elena insisted on buying me boba, and after we’d been enjoying the tea for a while, she offered me a sip of her own drink, which I tried to accept without blushing too much. It tasted of coffee and cream and good company. I wondered about that little gesture, but clamped down on the thought before it could be expressed.
We tried on makeup, and hidden behind the clearance aisle, Elena grabbed my hand and swatched it with a lip gloss she’d chosen — “Trust me!” — and besotted, I told her that trusting her had always worked out for me.
She wavered. “You shouldn't trust me so much. I’m bound to let you down eventually.”
“Then I'm just going to ride it out,” I said.
***
By then, I’d gotten used to the intimacy of female friendships and would regularly tell my friends I loved them. But Elena felt more attentive to me than any friend I’d ever had, intuitively knowing when I was upset and how to calm me. It was clear I mattered to her.
I started to test the waters. I needed clarity, to know that I could reach out and touch her the same way she would sometimes reach for me — I had never been the one to initiate. I obsessed over how to articulate my feelings until I finally gave up, afraid to risk our friendship.
But Elena had known how I felt all along. One evening, she sent me a strangely anxious text. It simply said that she didn’t feel the same way I did.
I'd never actually had the chance to tell her what I was feeling or what I wanted. But now I was losing the chance forever. Before it slipped away, I told her I liked her for the same reasons I treasured her friendship. Had I made her uncomfortable? I hadn't. Did she want any new boundaries? No, she was comfortable with how I acted around her.
I knew that the accepted thing to do as a heartbroken woman was to hood yourself in a heavy blanket, listen to music on repeat for hours, cry, and eat ungodly amounts of chocolate or ice cream. Almost all of these clichés came naturally, but being trans, I only wanted salt. I must have needed it. After a lifetime of repression, the combination of grief and estrogen finally let me weep a torrent of saline tears.
We had class the next morning. Elena and I weren’t sure what to say to each other. The first flowers of the year had started to bloom, and I gave her a daffodil I’d picked that morning — “yellow, for friendship,” I said — and then we went and sat by each other in our usual spot. Elena scarcely let go of the flower, twirling it throughout the lecture.
I followed her to the campus lounge like always. Hours later, she was still holding onto the daffodil and asked me for a clip so she could put it in her hair.
***
By the next week, Elena would barely speak to me. Heartbroken and betrayed, I confronted her about avoiding me, and we fought. I told her I felt strange about her behaviour and accused her of discarding my friendship. Elena insisted that I was no different to her than to anyone else and that she couldn't understand how I even would think she might have been interested in me. I wept horribly. It made no sense that a friendship so strong could deteriorate so quickly.
There was nothing to be done, besides licking my wounds. I huddled in my blanket and binge-watched a series that I’d been optimistically saving to see with her. I drank a few glasses of wine and ate a bowl of popcorn doused in margarine, nutritional yeast, and salt.
I enjoyed myself at first. I crossed over into drunk around the same time the two female leads had their end-of-season kiss, and soon, I was crying again. I curled up in a corner and thought about how wretched I was, to think that this woman had loved me.
As devastated and confused as I was by her dismissal, I didn’t have the experience necessary to defend myself. Maybe I really was delusional. Maybe she really was that touchy with everyone, even though, truthfully, she seemed very reserved with most people. How would I know? What I did know was that as a trans woman pining for a cis woman, if I complained about how I’d been treated, I’d be in danger of sounding like the media narratives I’d heard of predatory trans women transitioning only to chase cis lesbians around. I loved Elena, and didn’t want to hurt her. So I stopped talking to our friends, and let myself disappear.
***
A few months later, I was still a pitiful creature, but now incongruously resplendent in rainbows and the colours of the trans and lesbian flags as I marched near the front of that year's Pride parade. I knew Elena would be there somewhere, and the thought made me want to throw up.
I wandered. I attempted to flirt with a woman with rainbow-dyed dreads and sang along to Chappell Roan in a dancing crowd, but I was adrift. As much as I loved these celebrations — I'd desperately wanted to be the one to introduce Elena to them — nothing really held my attention.
Finally, I arrived at a table for HIV services to do my usual hellos and thank-yous, and the woman there invited me to look at the stuff they were offering. I gazed down at the pamphlets, then darted my eyes to the other side of the table. There sat the biggest box of condoms I had ever seen in my life. I hesitated.
“Do you have any dental dams?” I asked, already blushing.
“There's some right there,” she pointed to a small box of discrete little envelopes next to the condoms, which I’d completely overlooked.
“Oh!”
“No wait, let me get you some of these,” she said, pulling out another massive cardboard box.
“I’m sorry, I'm still not entirely used to this sort of thing. I haven't been able to find any before, I just...” I trailed off into a nervous giggle, “...figured we were stuck using a sheet of Saran wrap?”
“You can also cut the top off a Ziploc bag,” she said helpfully, as I pawed through the colourful individually wrapped squares and grabbed a few at random. “What flavour do you want?”
“Flavour?” I looked down at the dams I was holding, and my face burned even hotter. I'd accidentally chosen dams in Elena's favourite flavour.
“..Strawberry sounds nice?” I squeaked, reading the label.
There's a poem by May Sarton, “Of Molluscs”, which comes to mind in moments when I feel vulnerable, for better or worse. The ocean rises, I thought as I sheepishly tucked the dams in my purse, salt as unshed tears. Love strikes down everyone, sooner or later. The only way to live is to accept your own vulnerability.
I'd shown the poem to Elena, once, but she didn't like it very much.
***
Summer waned into a series of oppressive rainstorms, and on one particularly dreary day, I found myself back on campus for my last few errands. The only shelter from the downpour was a little outbuilding at the edge of the now-empty campus parking lot. Inside it was the food pantry, where I could get some nuts and dried fruit and maybe run into some old acquaintances. Since my old dorm only had running water in the showers, it was common for students to pick up food and drink there.
The small, dark-haired goth staffing the pantry was quite new to me. I watched her, wide-eyed, as she sat me by the radiator, wrapped a knit shawl around my shoulders, and pushed a warm paper cup of instant stuffing into my hands. Another with hot chocolate soon followed.
“You look pretty in that shawl,” she told me as I pulled it up over my head like a hood. “Especially your eyes.”
My cheeks warmed as I batted my eyelashes at her, wondering if I'd wandered into a romance novel and laughing at myself for being so easily wooed by warm food.
It seemed my new friend Stella was quite the cook, which I found comforting. She talked at length about dishes she'd prepared, and I felt an almost competitive need to prove that I also knew my way around a kitchen. A spirited conversation arose, and I couldn’t help myself, finally agreeing to join her at a farmer's market later that month, which she insisted was the ideal lesbian date.
We sang together as raindrops rattled the tin roof, and I sighed happily, safe and content. By the time she pulled her chair closer so our knees were touching, I was blushing too hard to be cynical. I was ready for her.
But as Stella drew me close, resting my head on her shoulder and lacing her fingers into mine, I felt a pang. It wasn't like being with Elena at all. My thoughts were still racing, and I was painfully aware of how our cold hands didn't quite seem to fit together.
Maybe if I’m patient, I thought, nuzzling closer and closing my eyes, it’ll be like before.
***
The next time I saw Elena, it was a bright autumn day. I was at a café downtown, squirming at a little streetside table, fussing with my sunhat and diaphanous skirt. The café was on a familiar street where I could see a memory anywhere I looked, and I watched leaves and passersby skittering over the brick sidewalk until I heard my name.
I cried out for her as I rose, and Elena ran into my arms. She rested her head on my shoulder, kicking up a leg and letting me support her, and we lingered for a few breaths. Then the moment was over, and we watched each other, guarded and unsure.
We ordered espressos. Elena wasn’t hungry, but I ordered a lox bagel to nibble on as we talked. I was surprised, expecting it to have something pickle-adjacent — maybe some dill, or capers — but the fish was delicious on its own. Before long, we were commiserating over the oppressive societal expectations of how women should eat. Elena bemoaned her inability to entirely escape the thrall of such habits, and I talked about how easy it is for trans women to absorb unhealthy expectations from cis women, starting the cycle anew.
“You seem different,” Elena said appreciatively. “You never used to talk about trans stuff in public.”
I'd recently found an extraordinary document that collected the anecdotal experiences of transgender people on hormone replacement therapy. Some of the things were so accurate it was uncanny: my former clumsiness, dubious attention span, longing to be cuddled, and even the foods I craved. I had to bury my face in my hands while reading it, peeking through fingers at one unbelievable revelation after another. It was like being a butterfly pinned to a board. Being trans has always felt like being naked.
As we walked, I shared some of my findings with Elena.
Coffee tasted different to me after taking estrogen, I told her. I could appreciate the complexity of the taste more, picking up different notes of acidity or bitterness than I did before. The difference had been like having my first fresh-brewed cup after a lifetime of warmed-over dregs.
It made sense, because in that document, I'd read that trans women often grow to appreciate spicier and earthier flavours in their food, seeking out the flavours previously denied to them. And there was the answer to why we wanted pickles, too: taking spironolactone, a drug which neutralizes the effects of testosterone, causes your body to excrete more sodium, triggering cravings for salty foods.
Trans women develop a more perceptive sense of smell, too. The moment I'd read that, I ran outside and I realized that for the first time that I could smell flowers on the breeze. I couldn’t believe the delicacy of the scent, or how I’d always known flowers smelled somehow wrong to me until I transitioned. At that moment, I wept.
Something I didn’t mention to Elena was that I’d also learned that the way I smelled and tasted was hormonally controlled, too. That meant that in the end, I was no different from a cis woman. It didn't matter. Elena had always treated me as her equal, treated me like someone who mattered.
Each time she had held my hand, my fearful mind had stopped. I was safe with her. I would look into her grey eyes, flitting with nerves, and feel the weight of all those years in which I hadn’t really lived.
Thousands of women have fallen in love with their best friend. That's really all this was, wasn't it? All this time, afraid I wouldn't be loved as a woman, when in the end, it simply came down to whether I’d be loved as myself.
I was exactly who I wanted to be, and I wasn’t what she wanted.
Alone in my car, Elena apologized for hurting me. “You didn’t hurt me, Elena,” I said impulsively. “I just wanted to kiss you, that’s not your fault.”
As Elena got out and started walking away, I smiled and blew her a kiss.
Lira Green is a fantasy author who writes stories about trans women who grow old and lesbians who get the chance to be young. Her favourite meal can be cooked by tossing farfalle with a white sauce made with Parmesan and miso, and serving it with white beans and kale cooked in aromatics with milk.
If this piece struck you, please consider supporting a local organization that advocates for trans and nonbinary communities! Often understaffed and underfunded, these groups are vital, and if you've been feeling helpless, there is always meaningful work to be done if you're willing to learn about your local support network.
You can also help by donating to the Trans Lifeline project, which operates a hotline for trans people to speak safely to other trans people if in crisis. And if you have trans or nonbinary loved ones, a hot meal can work wonders in dark times, when cooked with love.
Given the personal nature of the story, Lira writes here under a pen name, but we’ve loved the chance to get to know her and we’re grateful that she has chosen FFJ as a home for her words.