How to Change Your Identity, In Three Easy Steps

Step One.

“I kind of regret my tattoo,” I sighed.

I shifted toward Ellis and pulled the sheet over my shoulder, staring into their amber eyes. 

“Why?” they asked, their black hair spilling around the pillow. I thought they looked like an angel.

“Well it’s my favorite part of my body, like whenever people talk about tattoos I tell everyone to go to Dana,” I explained. “I love the artwork, it’s so good, I just like, I feel like the meaning is different now than back when I got it, you know?”

“If you like how it looks and you show it off, why would you regret it?” Ellis responded, satisfactory and immediate. Typical. I couldn’t identify why this was frustrating.

“I don’t know,” I conceded, climbing on top of my partner. “That’s a good question. You’re so smart.”

I guided Ellis’s thick tendrils away from their neck and began to kiss the soft morsel of their skin. They closed their eyes, approaching my side with a tentative hand before grasping my lower ribs in a silent signal to stop. I stopped.

“What’s up?”

“Like… right now?”

“Why not?”

“It’s daytime.”

I sighed, thoughtlessly.

“I’m sorry,” they offered.

“Don’t be sorry, never be sorry for that, please. We don’t even have to have sex at all.”

“I want to. Just not right now.”

We stewed together. Sunset cradled late afternoon, humming as it caramelized the soft yellow light that penetrated the window.

Eventually, they asked, “Do you still wanna get boba?”

“Can we go in, like, ten minutes?”

“Sure. That sounds good.”

I was visiting Ellis in New York, testing if I could really move there. 

Ellis had become my world. We’d met as young teenagers through Lainey the semester before they went off to a prestigious boarding school on their own merit. Our friendship began with a send-off: we brought a sage green, embroidered tablecloth, china, candles and a rotisserie chicken to school and feasted together in the cafeteria. That summer, we watched bad movies and made one of our own. They came out to me as trans, and I came out as queer, pining over another mutual friend, Riley. But of course, I liked Ellis, too, and it was 2015, and we were 15 and 16, and all of this was a very big deal. I was going to miss them.

But they never went away.

They would come back and visit with stories. They’d broken a world record: largest blanket fort. The blankets were, of course, donated to people in need. They started making video games, and I’d always play them, and they always got better. Sometimes they’d send me their writing, which I didn’t care for, but some of it made me laugh. Meanwhile, I was running cross country, taking APs and becoming a producer for the high school’s student media program. I was a good kid. Just not as good as Ellis.

They went on to become a game designer (now professor) at a Very Important university, yet still, they were always the first to text me on my birthday. I myself had become a purple-haired, sober bartender going to a state school, and I lived with my parents. When I invited them to my annual family beach vacation (they all loved Ellis), we reminisced and discovered both of us had had teenage crushes.

I remember standing on the beach at night, under the stars, Ellis three drinks in with their legs wrapped around me as I held them, kissed them, marveled in them, the ocean crashing, cicadas screaming. They were taller than me, but so small, so easy to lift. And so smart.

We didn’t tell my family at first. It would have been too weird. My dad called Ellis his only son, even though they were an “odd duck.”

And so, at the end of the trip, I drove my secret lover back to the Charleston Airport and watched them depart for New York before heading back to Summerville, the palmettos along the highway shaping the way.

I wanted to move to New York because of Broad City, not Ellis. And I wanted to move because I’d visited in 2019 for a conference at Reuters and really liked it. Not because of Ellis… and definitely not because I was ashamed.

But first, I needed to graduate college. I kept going to class and kickboxing and working at the hotel bar downtown, trying and failing to make new friends at my new school, ready for the hard times to be over, ready to move on from the south.

Ellis and I FaceTimed every night, and nobody made me laugh harder. Sometimes we’d order food delivery to each other’s places and have movie nights on Zoom. We built a house in Minecraft and pushed our beds together. Eventually, I had the opportunity to do my final semester in Spain, and they encouraged me to take it, so I took it.

My senior thesis was about the homogenization of the Iberian Peninsula. I argued that Spanish Christian hegemony was a threat to sustainability in the region. I found that the country was cruel, but grand.

I fell in love with Islamic architecture, speechless by the vastness of perfectly symmetrical and intertwining patterns, because God is infinite, and math is infinite, and God is beautiful, and math is beautiful, and God is unknowable, and math is unknowable.

I decided to start drinking again, because there was no way I was going to live in Europe and not have wine. I found a different brown-haired Tucker to drink with, one who never touched me. 

At first glance, this Tucker was a douche. A frat type with a Myrtle Beach accent. But he was sensitive. Bisexual. Insightful. He just couldn’t keep up with the rest of us academically. It was all in his headspace.

Still, Tucker and I were cutting it up with the Spaniards. We drank in Trujillo. We drank in Caceres. We drank in Madrid. We drank in Sevilla, and Granada, and then we drank in Switzerland and Venice, too. We flirted with girls, ran with the bulls, ate sticky brunost at a cheese festival and spit it out. He’d make out with people and get into fights, and one time I lost him because he’d climbed onto the roof of the nightclub.

I also met Rhett, an 18-year-old trans man who set such an example for 22-year-old me that I confessed my gender feelings to him (though I wouldn’t begin the process of coming out as nonbinary until a little while later). We’re still friends - he’s doing well.

It was a warped kind of euphoria, like all kinds, and this was the kind that isn’t really real because it’s just privilege and alcohol, and because you know you’re actually in Spain to learn more about the country’s dark past while trying to forget your own. Deep down, I was still sad.

Ellis and I called every night, but now, their self-prescribed avoidant attachment style was starting to show. Still, I leaned away from the dancer’s kiss at the strip club my last night in Madrid and found it strange when I told Ellis and they asked me why.

Step two.

“What are you going to do tomorrow?” Ellis asked. 

My first month in the city wasn’t what I’d thought. I’d tried to make friends online before I moved, but each one disappeared like a plane into the sky. My new roommates were kind of shady. And Ellis wouldn’t go down on me, but that was fine. It was fine.

“I’m buying a vibrator,” I replied, frustrated. “And I’m going to a lesbian bar.”

At the sex shop, the sales guy eagerly sold me a rose toy.

And that night, I went to Ginger’s. Cash only.

The yellow and blue facade coaxed me forward, and I shyly gave the door dyke my South Carolina driver’s license. She held the door for me, and I slid inside.

The dim lighting comforted me. The futch bartender slung me a beer.

There was a pool table and an old barber’s chair and a back patio where you could smoke weed. Everyone seemed like they already had someone to talk to. So, I found the only open chair - between the patio steps and the trash cans - and I smoked, and I watched.

The people were beautiful. There was a girl in a pink bikini top and mini skirt with pom-pom earrings and a necklace that said “DYKE,” and a small crowd gathered around her as she commanded their attention. There was a short, round masc with an undercut and glitter on their temple who had a mischievous smile when they joked with their butch friends. There was an elegant older woman in silk. There was a too-drunk college kid. There was… someone, approaching me.

They were small, wearing a black Adidas top and rainbow Yankees cap. Tan, dark eyes, short, curly blonde hair. 

“Are you here by yourself?” They asked.

“Yeah, it’s my first time,” I replied. “Cool place.”

“Ohhhh, that’s what’s up, welcome to Ginger’s!” They exclaimed with a sincerity that took me by surprise. “I’m Solar. They/them.”

“Good to meet you,” I said, standing. “It’s… Solar?”

“Yeah,” they said. “Like the sun.”

“Oh, cool. I’m Ann Elizabeth. She/her.”

“Okay, A.E.! Where are you from?”

“South Carolina.” I paused. “You?”

“I’m from the Bronx,” they said. “Born and raised.” 

“Oh, that’s amazing. Can I buy you a drink?” I asked.

“Wow, thank you! But no, I don’t drink,” they laughed. “Do you want something?”

“Actually, yeah,” I said, “But I have a partner.”

“Ooh, what’s their name, what’s their name?”

“Ellis.”

We headed back in for the bar.

Solar was an entrepreneur who said the only kind of capitalism they liked was rainbow capitalism (and this, I disagreed with). They were proud to be Chilean, and they were so, so friendly.

“There’s a lot of good people here,” they told me. “Not like Manhattan. I’ve met a lot of mean people in Manhattan.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, I try to be friendly and talk to people but not everyone is so nice. So I just keep moving.” 

I would come to find that this was truly who they were. A kind-hearted, gay-loving, internet-hustling badass who wouldn’t let the world turn them cruel.

We talked for a while, though I didn’t share much. They told me about New York and its lesbian scene, and they flirted with me a bit, but in a way that was safe.

Eventually we found ourselves talking on the stoop outside the bar facing 5th Avenue when a younger girl sat beside us to smoke. Her name was Nima, and she was studying art. She showed us her fabric works on her phone. I was crossfaded and amazed.

Solar had to go, so we swapped Instagrams. After they left, Nima and I spent the dark, early morning trading phone games and giggling. The next person to join us on the stoop was a trans girl named Rosie - she was a lawyer, and she was getting engaged. 

“How do you get there?” I asked her.

“You just have to keep going,” she said.

Step three.

Ellis and I broke up after just two months of me living in the city. 

“I’m kind of worried that I’ve only ever dated you,” they’d told me as we paced the blocks surrounding their Crown Heights apartment. 

I had thought about this before, too. Time had passed, our humor and politics and sensibilities melting together, and it was everything, and I wanted everything forever. But I didn’t want Ellis to only ever be with me.

“We can break up.” 

I was sincere. They had given me so much - restored part of my confidence, given me faith in my ability to maintain relationships, helped me move to the city. I wanted them to have everything they wanted, too. 

So we talked about it for three days. They didn’t cry, but they looked sad. I told them I wouldn’t break up with them because I had no reason to, but if they needed to break up with me, then I would support that, because I loved them. 

The only problem: we had Kehlani tickets.

I’d bought them before I moved because Rico Nasty was opening. Her music had helped me work through my rage. Back when I lived in the south, I would listen to Nightmare Vacation on the way to the kickboxing gym and then punch that shit out. 

So we agreed to break up after the concert that Friday, days after our one year anniversary.

I assembled my best approximation of a Rico-inspired look: a burgundy bodycon dress, one white contact lens and a crown made of teeth.

Solemnly, we set out for the concert, me in my ridiculous getup and Ellis in jeans and a hoodie. 

It was a very queer scene. I was there for Rico but fell in love with Kehlani. I cried the whole time, an ocean of New York lesbians singing around us as if they were sirens beaconing me to join them. And sweet, kind Ellis was there for me.

They bought me pizza. We went back to my new place where we had the best sex of our relationship on my twin bed. The next morning, they broke up with me, and we traded sentiments about what we meant to each other before I watched them leave, and my stomach sank as I accepted these first moments of no-contact.

I was alone again.

But this time, I was alone in New York.