I Have to Be the Hottest Oracle at the Shrine of Dodona for Some Reason
There are lots of ways to fuck up your perfectly good body with exogenous hormones.
I.
There are lots of ways to fuck up your perfectly good body with exogenous hormones. There’s pills, implants, patches, gels. You knew a guy once, before Gemma saved you, who swore his thick beard was entirely the result of a special tea shipped in from Vanuatu.
But the best way, they tell you, is good old injections. Probably because then they can sell you the needles and syringes, too.
You pull the kit from your nightstand and draw up the thick yellowish liquid. Zero point four milliliters at two hundred milligrams per milliliter, eighty milligrams total of testosterone cypionate. Inject once per week for the rest of your life and Allison becomes Tony. Easy-peasy.
Maybe too fucking easy.
You know you shouldn’t want this. You definitely shouldn’t do this. But every time you think of flushing the vial, your chest goes tight and your rabbit heart pounds. Masculinity is a drug just like everything else. Stupid, stupid.
Your injection sites have shifted in a year and a half. You run your hand along the migrated fat, nearly gone now from your thighs and settled behind your navel. The veins in your arms bulge with life. You’ve always liked men’s forearms, decisive and present. It’s one of the things you most looked forward to.
Mom’s in the kitchen. You can hear the floorboards creaking safely away downstairs. She’d flip if she found your stash, would call the pastor again for another round of meeting-praying-begging the thing inside you to come out. You don’t know how to tell her that it’s already here. When you walk into the grocery store people notice you now. The guy behind the counter giving you the Nod. When you talk, they listen. When they listen, you feel alive. Even Gemma never noticed you until your chest started sprouting.
Maybe that’s why you still can’t kick the habit. Can’t, or don’t want to.
The needle doesn’t hurt. You press the plunger down and relief floods you. You tell yourself you’ll stop next week.
You don’t know it yet, but this was the first test.
II.
“I have something for you.”
One hand on the wheel, Gemma leans over you, reaching for the glove compartment. You hold your breath – you’re scared she’ll be able to smell it on you, a wolf tracking a bloodied hare – but she just opens the compartment and drops something into your lap: a circlet of woven stems, smooth and dry.
“Call it a detransition gift.” Gemma takes another long pull on her tea. She’s the kind of person who can make a travel thermos look glamorous. “How long’s it been now? Two weeks?”
“Three,” you lie. Your fingers find this morning’s injection site, and you press on the lump under your skin until it hurts. “Are you sure I’m allowed to come?”
“Yes, dummy!” She watches you pull the bracelet over your too-hairy wrist. “Everyone’s excited to meet you! You’re, like, prodigal. Has your cycle restarted yet?”
You haven’t had a period since you started hormones. Just the thought of it makes your stomach flip. “Not yet.”
Gemma waves you off with one hand and switches lanes with the other. I-95 roars under her Subaru. “That’s exactly why I wanted to bring you to camp. Your body’s healing. You deserve a vacation.”
Camp. A weekend in the woods with Gemma and her closest girlfriends. Low tents and bonfires and woods lit by flashlight. It’s never been Like That with you two, but…
“We deserve love, Allie,” she says softly, like she’s reading your mind. “We used to be worshiped. We were oracles, priestesses. Now look at the state of things. No wonder you don’t feel like a woman.”
You watch your own reflection in the sideview mirror. You don’t have the heart to tell her you don’t know what the hell a woman is supposed to feel like. Then again, you don’t know what a man is supposed to feel like, either.
“But womanhood isn’t a piece of clothing.” Gemma goes on, like she’s reciting a poem. “It’s blood and sweat. It’s primal. You know that better than anyone. What you’re doing, reclaiming your power? That takes bravery.” Bravery is one of Gemma’s favorite words, along with sisterhood and discernment and autogynephile.
“I don’t feel all that brave,” you admit. Fingers still on the bruise.
It’s easy to flip the switch in your brain, to see yourself the way Gemma sees you: chunky jaw and acne scars and stubble prickling your upper lip. A ruin of a person, a failed experiment. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear.
“Don’t worry,” Gemma says, “that’s not really you.”
A shiver runs down your spine. Maybe it’s a trick of the morning light but you watch your reflection change: thin brows, undefined arms. You swear, you fucking swear you can smell yourself the way you were before, soft and unintrusive, fine china stacked in a cupboard, never used.
Your hands are shaking. What did the therapist say? Grounding. Something to touch, something to taste. You reach for the travel thermos.
“Allie, wait—”
A rancid metallic taste floods your mouth, like copper pipe pulled from a sewer. You lift the lid:
A tampon soaks in red water.
III.
Two statues guard the camp’s main gate. You have to crane your head back to see them: women, twenty feet tall with identical button noses and heavy-lidded eyes, one younger and swooning in a tight-fitting dress, the older one carrying a sword and shield.
I’m sitting by the path, sweating into my camp chair. Wildflowers brush against my ankles, blue and white and yellow. Dandelions. Weeds.
As you approach from the parking lot, I salute you with my can of High Life. “Mornin’, TERFs!”
Your friend’s eyes go hard as she clocks me. “I think you’re in the wrong place,” she says evenly. “This retreat is for biological women.”
I snap my fingers, faux-shocked. “Oh, shit,” I start, but then I get a good look at you, and my train of thought derails. “...Tony?”
Gemma looks from me to you and back again. “You know this – this person?”
“No,” you say, too quickly, as something floods your system, hormones or death wish or plain old lust. You want to punch me, want to feel my skin under yours, want to…“You don’t know me,” you say again, feeling petulant and hating yourself for it.
Gemma turns back to me. “This is private land. You can’t be here.” She’s wrong, of course. The property line is about ten yards behind me, and she knows it.
“You’re shacking up with wannabe Jo Rowling? Was I that bad?” I shift in the seat just enough to give her a glimpse of the handgun holstered to my shorts. I may be here alone, but I’m not stupid.
You step closer to me, guilt thrumming in your taut-wire limbs. “I’m not like you,” you say, soft and unsure. “I’m normal.”
The sun sends the statues’ gigantic shadows creeping our way. “Yeah,” I deadpan, “this is all completely normal.”
Gemma looks nervous now. “Allie. Let’s just go.”
“I’m a woman with a baritone.” You take another step. You can’t help it. “The looks I get from people? You don’t know what it’s like.”
I struggle to hold back a laugh. “Have you never done anything hard before?”
“It’s not right,” you plead, cringing as your voice cracks.
“Who cares about right? Why can’t it just feel good?”
A bee hums up from the wildflowers, buzzing lazy circles between us. You’re close enough now for me to take your hand. I breathe in your boy-scent, sunscreen and freedom.
“It does feel good, doesn’t it?” Something roars up in me, giving me the words. “When you took your first shot, it was like coming alive. Like touching grass. Like feeling the earth sing under your feet.”
Your fingers tremble. “How do you know that?”
The power flows from my eyes into yours. “She’s not the only one who knows you.”
“Allie.” Gemma’s hand on your other elbow, tugging you away, breaking our contact. Gemma, touching you. “Look at me.”
That’s when I see the bracelet on your wrist. Those crackling stems. “Where did you get that?”
“Ignore them,” Gemma intones. Her blood-taste still coats your tongue, copper and cinnamon.
“That’s knotgrass.” The pieces click together, but it’s too late. I see you flip the switch and look at me again: raspy falsetto and bare forehead, nipples poking through a cotton tank top.
“Tony.” I strain toward my upper range; maybe if I sound right, you’ll hear me. “This isn’t you.”
You draw yourself up to your full height, your head turned toward Gemma again. “Then what is?”
You don’t look back as you march toward the front gates. You can’t help but feel like this was all some kind of test.
It was.
IV.
Hormones change everything about your body, and I mean everything. The way you smell, how much you sweat, the texture of your skin. Some changes are subtle, blossoming over the course of years. Others…not so much.
“Can I suck your cock?”
Three weeks ago, a sticky bathroom stall, breath steaming your hair. I—Cassandra, that’s my name, you remember it now—I didn’t wait for an answer, tugging at your belt buckle, admiring what I found underneath.
“Is it okay?” Your nervousness was cute; you guys are always so self-conscious. “Does it look weird?”
“It’s perfect.” I pulled back the overgrown hood between your legs to reveal the bright pink shaft. You hissed at the pleasure of your cock in my mouth; your hand slammed into the stall wall.
It’s so fucking hetero, getting sucked off in a bathroom, but with us it felt like reinventing something, like discovering and being discovered all at once, God and Adam touching fingertips. It didn’t matter that you’d never see me again.
Until you did.
V.
“She fucked it.”
Gemma’s voice is loud enough to embarrass you in front of the dozen or so women who greet you in the packed-dirt clearing of the camp. One of them drapes a wreath over your head, thin blossoms that smell like nothing at all. Someone else pushes a bread roll into your hand: allspice and herbs. You haven’t eaten all day.
“The abject?” gasps the woman who gave you the wreath. She’s old, her skin dry and white like the flowers. “I knew this was a mistake. I’m ninety-three. I can’t wait another year.”
“Allie is still Allie.” Gemma understands, of course she does. Your elbow still tingles where she touched you. “Just go get ready.”
The crowd disperses obediently. Now it’s just you and Gemma, the way you like it, except:
“I’m sorry.” You don’t know what you’re apologizing for, really. You rip into the bread, grounding, something to chew, but the more you try the harder it is to focus, and the more there’s a wrong feeling bubbling up in your stomach–
And then Gemma’s small soft hands are on your face. “Don’t ever apologize. We’ve all made mistakes. You’re special, remember?”
Special, but not perfect. The feeling in your stomach rears up into your throat. You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve any of this.
“I’m still on T.”
Gemma blinks. "What?"
Her eyes are like a pool of ice water. You could fall into them, you are falling into them. No time to think, and now you’re grabbing at her hair, searching for her lips with yours, Gemma, Gemma, for whom you’ve given all of yourself, for whom you would give the world if you could, everything except the only thing that matters—
SMACK. A shadow passes over the sun. Your head is ringing.
“What the hell are you doing?”
She hit you. Gemma hit you.
You gape like a fish, both of you stunned, and as you shiver in the cold air you look up at the statues by the gate, judging you, and you realize, of course, of course, Gemma could never be with someone like you, not with the addiction coursing through you, of course she’s ashamed.
“I’m sorry. I need help. I need,” you start, and start again. “You make me feel so good. Why can’t it just feel good?”
The look in Gemma’s eyes hollows you out. “You really don’t get it, do you?”
PAIN.
Bone-deep and heavy like you’ve swallowed rocks, rolling down through your abdomen, swallowing you whole. Pain like you haven’t felt in a year and a half.
“We are not a fucking costume.” Every syllable sends another skewer through your belly. You fall to your knees, Gemma standing over you, exorcizing. “We are blood and sweat and sacrifice. We are birth and birthright. We’re not supposed to feel good.”
You realize this was what it was all about, the transactivists, the second-guessing, me, all to teach you why you were here, what it was all for, and all that’s left to do is sob, and nod, and sob again, yes, you understand now, and please can she just stop hurting you.
Then: her hand under your chin. Through your tears you can’t tell if the face in front of you is Gemma or the old woman or the statues at the gate.
“It’s all right,” says the mothergoddess. “You may still be revealed.”
Then she’s gone. She leaves you there, doubled over, as shame crushes your lungs and drowns your heart.
And that’s when you feel the wetness seeping through your clothes.
You tear your jeans down around your ankles and there it is, blood on your fingers, blood between your legs as cramps keep rolling through you, and you vomit into the hard-packed dirt, and you know Gemma’s blessed you, or maybe it’s the camp, or maybe it’s you, your own divinity shining through, your place in the world restored, and you look around for something to wipe off the blood and vomit, leaves, something, and that’s when you realize there’s no grass, no flowers, no life anywhere around you,
And you look up at the woods beyond the cabins, barren branches like arms outstretched, we are dying, they cry, we are dead, and that thing boils in your blood again, something’s not right, but that’s impossible because you are home with your sisters, you are receiving the vital power, you are known by the sign encircling your wrist, you are anointed, you are loved,
And a solitary bee loops past your face before circling back, and you watch it go, back beyond the statues’ great gaze, and you hear a gunshot ring out there, in the safety of the wildflowers, and in the back of your mind you wonder what’s happening, and you wonder if I’m okay,
And then the sleeping pills in the bread kick in.
VI.
First comes the headache, like the world’s worst hangover. I groan, lift my hand to my head. What kind of party—?
Okay, scratch that. I try to lift my hand to my head, except my hand won’t budge.
“It’s awake,” says someone nearby. I open my eyes and see my own naked body. My chin lolls on my chest. Whatever they used to knock me out, it was good stuff. Not a lot of people can sleep through being tied upright to a post.
Light flickers across my body; I look up to see a bonfire’s flames licking twenty feet into the sky, flaring out to threaten the dead trees that circle the clearing.
You stand a few feet away, watching me, your face expressionless. There’s a weird little crown jammed on your head, seashells and wave-worn rocks.
“Hey, man,” I mutter, trying to keep it light. “Funny seeing you here.”
“You have no right,” says another voice, “to address the vessel.” My eyes are adjusting, enough to make out the women ringing the fire. I guess I expected robes or hoods or something but no, they’re all naked too. I guess that makes me feel a little better.
Gemma steps close to the flames. There’s a swirling sigil traced in ash on her forehead. “You shouldn’t have come alone, abject.”
“At least I have a spine about it, little miss ambush.” I scan the bodies in the circle until I find her: one of them has a bandaged thigh where I managed to get a shot off. “How’s that leg feeling?”
The woman doesn’t answer. All eyes are on Gemma, who pulls something off a cord on her neck and throws it onto the logs. Glass shatters, and then the scent of it rolls through: sulfur and singed hair.
Gemma leans into the smoke and breathes deep. For a moment, nobody moves, as she rolls her neck and sways. Then she opens her ice-blue eyes and prophesies:
“In the old days, we were worshiped as holy. We communed with the sun at Delphi; we sang with the trees of Dodona.”
“WE ALONE REMEMBER THE GODDESS,” echo the women around the circle.
Gemma fixes me in a hateful stare. “Now the men have ruined our temples. They have covered up our holy sites. But our blood remembers the moon. Our feet know the path before us, and we have walked it.”
“WE ALONE WALK THE PATH,” the women chant as one.
There’s a knife in your hand, tied there with knotgrass, stems crisscrossing wrist to palm to blade. You step toward me. Were your eyes always that blue?
“Tony, come on. I understand regretting a hookup, but this is ridiculous.” I search you for recognition, for signs of life, and find nothing.
“The men sought our power, by theft and imitation they sought it, by rape and pillage they sought it.” A cold breeze sends embers fluttering into Gemma. I can hear them burning against her flesh. “So we hid it away, until a prodigal daughter would reveal it again.”
“WE ALONE KEEP THE KEYS.”
I’m getting nervous now, as you reach for me. “You guys do know trans women have been religious figures for, like, ever, right? I mean we really oughta be teaming up.”
“We,” crows Gemma, “are the daughters of the witches who would not burn.”
I roll my eyes—2014 wants its Tumblr posts back, I’m about to say—but then you grab my cock, soft and small and exposed, and panic floods me as you raise the knife.
“Tony, it’s me. The knotgrass has you. Snap out of it.”
“Divinity requires sacrifice,” sneers Gemma. “The rot shall be culled.”
“BLOOD SHALL MEET WITH BLOOD.”
I thrash against the post. “Tony, PLEASE,” and finally I see a flicker of something, your too-blue eyes focusing in on mine, that far-away look dissipating for just a moment.
This is the last test.
“My name is Allison,” you pray, and then you cut—
And I scream, and scream, and I feel the power flowing out of me, dripping to the ground red and warm, seeding the barren earth, life crying out to life, begging,
Until you turn back to the fire, and throw in your prize, and gray-black smoke carries the scent of my burning flesh back to us, colors dancing at the edge of our vision, and the women are chanting, and we are chanting with them:
Ποικιλόθρον᾽ ὰθάνατ᾽ ᾽Αφροδιτα,
παῖ Δίοσ, δολόπλοκε, λίσσομαί σε
μή μ᾽ ἄσαισι μήτ᾽ ὀνίαισι δάμνα,
πότνια, θῦμον.
We don’t understand the words, but that’s OK. They are not for us to understand. We see that now. We are not worthy of understanding.
Not yet.
ἀλλά τυίδ᾽ ἔλθ᾽, αἴποτα κἀτέρωτα
τᾶσ ἔμασ αύδωσ αἴοισα πήλγι
ἔκλυεσ πάτροσ δὲ δόμον λίποισα
χρύσιον ἦλθεσ
The knife is still rooted to your hand. The thing that’s been growing inside you, the same thing that lives in Gemma and in the fire and in the dead land, it draws your attention downward, where the vile thing lies between your legs, thick and hooded like nature’s mistake.
The seashell crown presses on your brow like a signet ring on wax. You grab at your mark and the goddess keeps your movements swift and sure and you cut—
ἄρμ᾽ ὐποζεύξαια, κάλοι δέ σ᾽ ἆγον
ὤκεεσ στροῦθοι περὶ γᾶσ μελαίνασ
πύκνα δινεῦντεσ πτέῤ ἀπ᾽ ὠράνω
αἴθεροσ διὰ μέσσω.
Blood flows down your thighs, your calves, branching around your ankles, rivulets surging through the stone circle, copper on the air making your head throb, and then the twisted ragged nub of flesh lands, crackling and spitting, beside the remnants of my cock, two unnatural things given up, putting the world right, and you know that whatever mistakes you made in your past, this morning, six hours ago, now it is all washed away, and now you are reclaimed.
αῖψα δ᾽ ἐχίκοντο, σὺ δ᾽, ὦ μάσαιρα
μειδιάσαισ᾽ ἀθάνατῳ προσώπῳ,
ἤρἐ ὄττι δηὖτε πέπονθα κὤττι
δἦγτε κάλημι
Somewhere in the back of your mind there is a voice, screaming. Somewhere in the back of your mind there is pain.
Too late now.
You are chanting and the fire is rising, burning hotter, blue embers floating out around your feet, and somewhere someone is singing the words as you chant them but you don’t look, you can’t look, you are not worthy to look, and
ἔλθε μοι καὶ νῦν, χαλεπᾶν δὲ λῦσον
ἐκ μερίμναν ὄσσα δέ μοι τέλεσσαι
θῦμοσ ἰμμέρρει τέλεσον, σὐ δ᾽ αὔτα
σύμμαχοσ ἔσσο.
You feel like your brain’s being split in half, like the chanting is pulling out some essential part of you, burning it away—no, the small far-back part of you shrieks, no, no—
YES.
A dozen voices become a hundred become a thousand, nothing soft or living on the ground or in the trees to catch the echoes, all of us together chanting YES, YES, YES, and then the thing in the fire rises from the embers and steps to the edge of the stone circle, her skin cracked like old earth, her eyes filled with my blood:
COME HOME, DAUGHTER.
You see Gemma, or what’s left of her, caught in the expanding fire, burning away her perfect clothes, her perfect hair, her skin, until all that’s left are her teeth, chanting, her wide-hipped skeleton bright and flayed, and you know, you don’t look down but you just know the same is true of you,
COME BACK TO ME.
And we sail upward on the air, lifted on the sacrificial smoke, and we are not ourselves, and we are not alone, and we shall writhe for ever and ever in the devouring womb of the mothergoddess,
Amen.