Sharing Meals
PART II of My Trans Body Longs for Love and Salt
This is Part II 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 Part I, 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 II: Sharing Meals
One sunny day in the fall, I sat down on the steps of the dean's office, set my little insulated container of homemade egg fried rice on my lap, and kicked out my stockinged legs as I waited for Elena. I watched lackadaisically as students wandered past, listening to the casual ring of different languages, not caring if anyone was stealing glances at my calves. I was simply smiling too much.
The day before, Elena had been caterwauling to me over text about not having food in her dorm. This was a travesty, she explained, especially since she couldn’t afford to keep getting it delivered. I decided to do something about it, and sent her a text:
I just made a lot of fried rice and I have leftovers, would you like some?
Her reply was instantaneous, and the capital letters made me burst out laughing.
GOD BLESS YOU LIRA
dude i’m broke and barely have food in my dorm
I sighed with relief. As simple a gesture as it was, I’d never offered anyone food before. I wanted to cook for all my friends, but of course, Elena was first in line.
this is unacceptable no you deserve food
Im going to bring you fried rice the next time Im out and about
I love you, she replied.
The hyperbole made me blush like the schoolgirl I indeed was, and the next day, I was still beaming as I waited for her. After a few minutes of fussing with my ice packs and worrying if the food was good enough, she finally appeared in a cloud of apologies, dressed in a cream-coloured blouse and skirt. I handed her the egg rice and watched with muted horror as she thanked me and absent-mindedly stuffed the entire container of food into a messenger bag as she went off to get textbooks.
It felt a little anticlimactic. I wanted to watch her eat it, to see if she was enjoying it. But once she was safely ensconced in her dorm, she started texting again.
i haven’t eaten dinner yet but i tried a bite of the fried rice
SO good
even though i didnt heat it up or anything it was still REALLY tasty
As the evening progressed, Elena informed me of every detail as she circled the rice container like a tiger circling a gazelle.
Lira this is so fucking good
thank you so much
you put baby corn in it also which like god bless you i love baby corn
I glowed with such a pure kind of happiness that I couldn't help but feel embarrassed.
***
Not long after I gave her the rice, Elena invited me to a queer event at a local café. She'd never gone to anything that marked her as queer before. She was terribly nervous about it and wanted someone there for support. I understood that — it was still hard for me to call myself a lesbian.
I picked her up, and to distract her over the drive, I told her stories about interning as a beekeeper after high school: that a crate of ten thousand bees smells like warm fur, how I would sometimes dip my fingers into the stream of honey coming out of the centrifuge and taste its musky sweetness. The apiary was the first place I’d felt safe enough to introduce myself with a female name, and it was a second home to me. I’d had a crush on the head beekeeper — a woman with sparkling eyes and an impish grin— and Elena could tell just from how I sank into the steering wheel and sighed each time I said her name. She rolled her eyes at my obvious fawning, and I laughed and defended myself by listing her many charms.
At the café, I smiled as Elena gradually shook off her nerves and fell into easy conversation with our new friends. It all went perfectly. By the time we left, it was after dusk, and as we stepped across the street, she turned and thanked me.
“I’m glad I asked you to come,” she said, with rare earnestness. “You were the perfect person for this; so calm and relaxed.”
When I opened my mouth to reply, my eyes caught on Elena's glossed lips, and I was stunned. I wanted to kiss her.
I let out a breath and bloomed, not with longing, but relief. Never in my life had I wanted to kiss someone before. What a gift, I thought, for someone to finally, after all my life, make me feel so safe that I'd want to kiss them. It didn't matter then if I'd wind up kissing Elena, or someone else. I could love, I would love!
Elena insisted on buying us both curry before we went home. She preferred salty food to sweet, too, which was oddly reassuring. As we sat in my car, waiting to pick up her order, Elena got momentarily bashful, worried she had been a bit much in conversations she’d had that night. That struck me as so absurd I blurted my response without thinking.
“Actually, I think you're charming.”
Elena blushed so hard she had to look away.
After we parted ways, I stood in the dorm parking lot, looking up at the stars, all but convinced that I'd died and been given a second chance at life. After all, wasn’t that sort of what transition was? I was truly happy with just what I had in that moment, and grateful for it, however long it would last. None of it had ever felt possible before.
But even then, I was scared of losing it.
***
As the leaves started to fall, Elena and I found our paths beginning to diverge, and political strife began to intrude deeper into our lives. Distant wars felt closer and closer to home. Everyone at our university knew someone who knew someone in Kiev, Jaffa, or Sevastopol, and my friends now talked about violence and cruelty with a familiarity that terrified me. At the same time, I was hearing more and more rumours about horrifying things happening to trans people, sometimes in the places I’d grown up in. Local political opposition to trans people turned sharper and more targeted, and every time I heard of a new bill, I’d lie in bed worrying all night.
I helped host an event for the Transgender Day of Remembrance, setting up a wall of photos in one corner of the campus printmaking workshop, and as I prepared memorial photos and obituaries, I started noticing how many blurry selfies were in the bunch. Trans people tend to be photo-adverse, and it struck me that many of the deceased might never have had the chance to be represented by a decent photo. I didn't really have many good images of myself, either, and I started wondering what my own memorial would look like, if I was murdered. Life started to feel shorter, tighter.
I advertised the vigil as a potluck, hoping companionship and a pot of scalloped potatoes might help my kin at the university heal. For my pleading, the caféteria staff took pity on us and provided fruit and pastries, which assuaged my fear that there wouldn’t be enough for everyone to eat. I pictured a small crowd of trans and nonbinary students, eating and befriending each other, maybe even figuring out how we could keep each other safe.
Not a single student came to the print shop. Elena was at work, and most of my trans friends were in class.
I paced around the rusty old printing presses lining the shop in a black dress that was too tight, finally taking my place by the photo wall. It was hard to hide my disappointment as I shook hands with the dean and the college president, who were the only attendees. As my fellow coordinator, Olive, finally started reading the names of the deceased, I bit my lip and worried that the vigil had become a maudlin performance for cis people.
My old sparring partner Alex watched the event over Zoom, but I forgot there was anyone behind the black box on Olive’s laptop. When I remembered her, my stomach twisted. I was grateful, but I felt embarrassed to have her eyes on me when I was so vulnerable. She hadn’t always been gentle with my insecurities.
The food went untouched.
After cleaning up, I took my transgender pride flag, which I'd attached to a long wooden dowel, and went out into the November gloom in my mourning black. I wanted to be a spectre, a reminder of the enormous loss I was trying to honour. Maybe at least I could make a few cis people feel guilty, so the event wouldn’t be completely forgotten. I continued my procession. It took me to the edge of the shore, where the coastal wind whipped my flag so hard the ends frayed. I wasn't sure what I was trying to accomplish. I stood there for a long time, grieving and wondering what sort of life I was going to have.
That night, after eating the leftover potatoes for supper, I confided in Elena over text about the strain the vigil had taken on me. It wasn't quite coming out, but I knew she'd probably figure out I was trans. Cis women do not generally stalk the trails in black, waving trans flags.
Elena was sympathetic, but I wanted warmth more than words. I wanted to cling closer to her, but things weren't as simple as they were when we were only fencing. Her laugh had recently taken on a sharp edge; and she would often brood and make bleak jokes. A lot went unsaid between us, but it was clear that something vast and dark had entered my friend's life, and there was nothing I could do about it. She might not have known, but I was starting to feel the same way.
***
Winter set in. Elena didn't smile as often anymore. I stopped excitedly rambling about my work. Our friends wouldn’t stop repeating a dirge about how much they were going to miss “all this” after we graduated that spring, and it started to feel apocalyptic. The job listings I'd been searching filled up with scam jobs asking for help training AI models. I stopped writing my novel. Elena started joking that she was going to die of a heart attack at twenty-four, and I privately snarked that trans women measure life expectancy in dog years. We could all feel bad news coming, the way dogs feel in their bones that it's going to rain.
And then Elena invited me to come ice skating with her, and it felt like a last chance at something — at being young.
That night, the rink shone, bright and cold. I looked out at the skyline and the blinking lights of airport runways, and shivered. This was a special night. I was certain of it.
Neither of us could skate, but we were both too proud not to try. We limped around the edge of the rink, laughing, until our friends came and dragged Elena off to the centre. I wanted to join them, but I was still too unsure of my footing. But before I could force myself out onto the ice, I saw Elena break away from the rest and glide towards me.
“Hi Lira!” she chirped, linking her arm into mine and using me to come to a stop. I laughed and let Elena ramble about the difficulty of skating and how cold it was. After a moment, I noticed that she was still clinging to me, and there was an odd giddiness in my friend's voice. Somehow, she’d slipped her fingers between mine without my noticing, and we were now holding hands. Her grip was quite firm, and it felt strangely natural for us to be touching like this, although the more I thought about it, the more I felt faint.
Elena was acting differently than usual. She was blushing, and looking right at me. I trembled. Our conversation was going nowhere; she was waiting for me to do something.
It couldn't be that she wanted me to kiss her. Could it?
The moment I made up my mind to lean a little closer to her, my friends called out to Elena, and she startled. Casting her eyes downward, then back up at me, she squeezed my hand. “Love you,” she said, quietly enough that no one else could hear. She sounded disappointed, almost longing, and her tone was so unusual it struck me. The only thing I could manage was to squeeze her hand back.
Then she was gone.
📺 Stay tuned for Part III of Lira’s story, coming to your inbox next week!
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.