Sören's stomach turned flipflops as he sat under the umbrella in the outdoor portion of Bentham's one Starbucks, glancing around the parking lot to see if he could spot Anthony. One of Sören's life hacks for managing ADD was to leave early for appointments, so if he forgot anything he had time to rectify that - which also came in handy for running into traffic. But even as he knew the rest of the world didn't work like that, he still felt concern as the clock ticked closer to one PM, when he and Anthony had agreed to meet up here.
He was hoping that Anthony wasn't having second thoughts about dating a trans guy, but Sören reminded himself that Anthony seemed like a kind person - he was a veterinarian and a cat owner - and would likely have the common courtesy to call, text or e-mail if he was going to cancel. Even so, when it became one PM and Anthony was nowhere in sight, Sören felt like he was turning to ice.
Wait. Give it ten minutes. Give him the benefit of the doubt.
Sören swallowed hard and looked down. That was easier said than done - he'd been rejected enough times that even though he was just shy of twenty-nine he'd believed until very recently he'd end up alone; the one man who'd been willing to date him post-transition put his pants on and went home the minute he saw Sören's vulva, even though he'd been informed going into it. The only sex he'd ever had, years before, couldn't be called that, he had been raped.
Suddenly, there was Anthony. It was a chilly but sunny day, and Anthony's smile was as bright as the sky as he waved to Sören - he was carrying a single long-stemmed red rose with baby's breath in his other hand.
"Sorry if you've been waiting," Anthony called out as he hurried over. He handed Sören the rose. "I hope it's not too corny, I stopped at the florist on the way here and that's why I was almost late and didn't warn you - I wanted it to be a surprise and didn't want to lie and say I hit traffic or something."
"Nobody's ever gotten me flowers before," Sören said softly, getting a little choked up.
Anthony sat down. "I don't want you to think I got it because, uh..." He made a vague hand gesture. "I don't see you as anything but a guy. I'm just an old-fashioned dork. I did this with my first date with my last boyf-"
Sören snorted - the overexplaining almost killed the romantic moment but he found it somewhat hilarious. Just the same, he didn't want this to become a habit, so he reached across the table and patted Anthony's arm and gave The Speech that he'd given cis ally friends before. He lowered his voice because this was a small town, the cafe was busy on a Sunday afternoon, and he didn't want to break his cover living stealth around here. "OK, Anthony, look. I know you mean well and you're trying really hard not to fuck this up and I appreciate your consideration. But if this is going to work, you don't have to walk on eggshells for me and act like you're trying to win the Ally Olympics and say my gender identity is valid every five minutes, jæja? If you say or do something that offends me, I assure you that number one, I am completely capable of telling you like an adult, number two, I've dealt with enough assholes over the years that I can usually tell the difference between intentional bigotry and just being awkward, já?"
"OK. Sorry." Anthony exhaled and flashed an awkward grin.
"You didn't do anything wrong. That's another thing - don't beat yourself up, that's also not going to win the Ally Olympics."
"You still look really uncomfortable."
"It's just, you know. I'm stealth and I don't like talking about any of this in public." Sören glanced around again, nervously shifting in his seat.
Anthony nodded. "Understood."
"Thank you. How about we go grab coffee and maybe take it to Bolton Park or Craig Beach?"
"Do you want to take my car or yours?"
"I took the bus here," Sören said. "I don't drive."
Anthony stood up, then he raised his eyebrows, realizing what Sören just said. "Did you take the bus to my office? Or a cab? I'd be happy to recomp you for your fare -"
"I live in my best friend's basement and she took me to your office the other day."
"I see."
Sören felt another nervous prickle - he knew it made him sound like a freak that he didn't drive and he lived in someone's basement, but he wasn't going to lie to a prospective partner. He quickly moved back to the topic. "Anyway to answer your question, even though I wanted to meet in a public place I'm fine with you giving me a ride." Sören immediately pushed away the mental image of riding Anthony's cock - which he wanted, but even though he had a high libido from testosterone, he also had trauma issues and sex was still something that would require his trust.
Anthony and Sören walked into the shop - Anthony ordered a caramel macchiato, and Sören ordered a peppermint mocha now that pumpkin spice season was over. Anthony offered to pay for both of them; Sören had been prepared to pay his own way but he let him, and as Anthony stood in front of him to pay, Sören found himself staring at the way Anthony's jeans hugged his firm, round ass.
After he and Anthony went off to the end of the counter to wait for their drinks, Anthony smiled at him and Sören's cheeks burned, stomach fluttering. Anthony was definitely easy on the eyes. He was six-two and had a wiry build, and was put-together without seeming fussy - today Anthony was wearing a brown leather jacket over a cream cashmere sweater, with faded jeans and leather brogues that thocked on the floor. When they'd met, Sören had guessed Anthony was in his early forties and he was correct: Anthony's short black hair was starting to go silver, and crow's feet crinkled the corners of his eyes when he smiled. Anthony had moss-green eyes, was boyishly handsome and clean-shaven, and wore square-framed glasses. Sören had seen Anthony's hairy arms with his short-sleeved scrub top, and wondered if - hoped - Anthony was hairy all over, he liked that.
Sören felt tongue-tied - A cute guy likes me! - as they carried their drinks out to Anthony's charcoal grey Prius. Sören smiled at the Am Yisrael Chai bumper sticker, though he hoped someone wouldn't vandalize the car - or worse - one of these days; Sören was a little too familiar with hate crimes himself. He found his words once they climbed in the car. "Is that safe around here?"
"Is what," Anthony said, taking a sip of his coffee before starting the car.
"Your bumper sticker." Sören pointed to the Magen David necklace Anthony was wearing openly; once again Sören's was under his shirt, and not because he was ashamed. "That."
"I've been living in Maine for eight years - I was in Boston for two years before that - and in Bentham? I haven't really had a bad time with haters. People know me as one of the local veterinarians, they don't want to run me out of town. I've gotten the occasional nasty remark from guys I've hooked up with in Portland or New Hampshire and Massachusetts if they find out I'm Jewish, but I feel safer here than I did in London. That's why I moved to the US, my flat got bricked and I received death threats."
"Fuck, I'm so sorry." Sören put down the rose for a moment to gently touch Anthony's shoulder, aching for him - and feeling a surge of protective rage even though they were still mostly strangers and Anthony was bigger than him. "You said you lived in Boston - I moved here from there for similar reasons."
"Did that happen... recently?"
"Já. A couple weeks after October 7th." Sören pursed his lips and closed his eyes, trying to unsee what had haunted his nightmares for the last month. "I'd posted about the attacks on one of my socials and a few days later I came home from running some errands to find a swastika spraypainted on my driveway in red to look like blood, and a couple of my windows were broken, glass everywhere like Kristallnacht. My poor cat was OK, Baruch Hashem."
"Fuck."
After a pause, sitting with the weight of his words, Sören went on, "My best friend Yeyette - we met online a long time ago, she told me to come stay with her and her husband, and that's why I moved here. And I've just been... trying to pick up the pieces of myself that broke that day."
In silence, Anthony pulled over and gave Sören a fierce, tight hug.
They clung to each other for a long moment - every time Sören's mind replayed the horror from a month ago, he usually felt numb and floating just outside his body, but now it felt like Anthony was anchoring him and the weight of grief and rage and fear came crashing down. Sören couldn't cry just yet, T made it harder to cry, but there were definitely shock waves.
When they pulled apart, Anthony's eyes were too bright and tears slid down his cheeks. "I am so, so sorry that happened to you."
"I'm sorry that happened to you too." Sören squeezed him.
"Listen - whatever ends up happening or doesn't happen with us, I've got your back, OK?" Anthony patted him, then took a moment to pull himself together, sipping his coffee and taking deep breaths. "I take it you haven't tried to connect with the local Jewish community yet?"
"My dude, I've barely felt safe leaving the house to fucking buy groceries. Meeting you for coffee was a big, big deal. But since you brought it up - I didn't know what the community is like out here."
"I go to a Reform shul for Shabbos services, unless I get called in for an emergency at the clinic. It's very warm and welcoming... and inclusive. There's a lesbian couple who goes and our rabbi is female. Would you like to come with me next Saturday morning?"
Sören nodded. He felt nervous about being visibly Jewish again, and ashamed for feeling that anxiety considering he'd worked so hard to become Jewish and the first thing he'd been asked by his sponsoring rabbi was if he understood what he was getting into. But he knew that if this was going to work, Anthony was visibly - and proudly - Jewish. And he didn't want to live the rest of his life in fear. He was proud of Anthony's pride, and Sören wanted to feel that pride and joy again, too. "Saturday's my birthday, that seems fitting."
"We must celebrate! I can feed you after services - if you want, I'll make a cake on Friday before Shabbos starts. Also I've been meaning to ask you," Anthony said. "I did some reading and there's only like 250 Jews in Iceland...?"
"I'm a convert," Sören said - he doubted Anthony would judge him if Anthony was going to a Reform shul, but he'd gotten some rude remarks about this before. "I moved here in 2014 when Obama was still in office - I was twenty and had just completed transition - and I went to shul for the first time in 2015 and had my Beit Din in 2016 right after Trump got elected, and decided to be openly, defiantly Jewish until I got hate crimed last month."
"That must be a hell of a story."
Sören took a long sip of his coffee, staring out at the road. "I don't want to traumadump on you on our first date."
"We kind of already did that, so it's OK with me if you want to share more, but I won't push you if you're not comfortable."
"It's not that I'm not comfortable telling you - you seem nice, but it's not pretty, and you probably have clients falling apart on you every day, this is your time off to rest and -"
Anthony put up a hand. "If I tell you I'm fine with something, I mean it, I'm not saying it to be polite. I learnt to stop doing that shit a few years ago. We're getting to know each other and we might as well start somewhere, right? Before day, comes the night."
Sören sighed. "OK, but don't say I didn't warn you."
He waited until they arrived at the park. Despite it being a sunny Sunday afternoon, the park seemed not to attract many visitors in winter - they were alone, which gave Sören a boost of confidence with sharing more about himself, even though he worried that Anthony would still be mentally unprepared because it was a lot.
They didn't get into more conversation right away, just strolling through the park. The trees were mostly bare now, save for a few that clung to leaves of fire fading to earth, and the ground was completely covered with leaves. A few mute swans and mallard ducks were swimming on a peaceful pond that had not yet frozen, and reeds gently swayed in the breeze. There was a dispenser that took cash for bags of birdseed, with proceeds going to the local Audubon Society, and Anthony stopped to buy a bag of feed. As they walked around the pond, Anthony scattered seed, drawing the ducks. When they paused to watch the swans - Anthony seemed to be waiting for them in order to toss out the rest of the seed - Sören decided that he might as well let Anthony know what he was getting into, just like the rabbi had asked Sören if he understood the baggage he was taking on, years ago.
"My parents died when I was young, and my father's sister and her husband raised me. My uncle drank, and my aunt was a fundamentalist Christian and stayed with him because she felt she had to. I... wanted to be a boy from the time I was very small. I wasn't influenced by the Internet or media or any of that shit the TERFs lie about. Well, neither of them were having that. I learned to shut up about wanting to be a boy, but after I went through puberty it was like torture to, uh." Sören gestured at where his breasts had been, then down lower to where he still had a uterus. "I presented masculine because it was the least I could do to not fucking kill myself, and it was bad enough I got bullied in school for looking like a boy and not being like the other girls but that got my guardians thinking I was a lesbian, and my uncle started trying to... correct that." He didn't want to say the words; with the way Anthony winced as he looked away, Sören had a feeling he didn't need to. "Then my aunt started beating the shit out of me and calling me a whore who seduced him."
Anthony hissed. "Bloody hell, I'm fucking sorry."
Sören nodded and looked down, feeling self-conscious, not wanting to overburden Anthony with his trauma, but he couldn't stop here. "So anyway, the minute I moved out I got help to start transitioning, but even though Iceland is a progressive country I still got some shit at university, and between the gay community in Iceland being very very small - where I was pretty much guaranteed to stay single if I stayed there - and living in fear of my aunt and uncle coming to start more shit with me once I looked unmistakably male, I decided to move to the States. Like I said, Obama was in office and things looked... hopeful. I had no fucking idea we were about to have four years of the Cheeto."
"It blindsided a lot of us," Anthony said, nodding. "I was certain Clinton would win, I supported Sanders but still voted for her."
"My aunt's fucked up beliefs turned me off to religion, but the gallery where I worked was run by a nice Jewish lady - Karen - and her daughter. When I was still living in Reykjavik Karen was on vacation there and saw me painting in the park and she offered me a job as a curator at her gallery in Boston where I'd get to show my work sometimes. You know we don't, ah, recruit converts, we don't pro..." Sören struggled for the one word as his brain scrambled to translate through intense emotions.
"Proselytize."
"That. But she was so kind. And I really needed that because moving here and living as male didn't fix everything. No queer guys wanted to date me, except for this one guy who treated me like I was a mutant, and I haven't tried since then. I felt demoralized and broken, and she knew I was depressed as fuck and she would invite me over for dinner once a week and some days she'd send me home from work with her leftovers. She wasn't just my boss, she became my mom friend."
Anthony smiled, and waited for him to continue.
"One day when she mentioned she was going with some people from her shul to a protest for Freddie Grey, I was like... wait, you're religious and liberal? You have to understand, the Church of Iceland is liberal but people are barely religious, most of us go to church only on Christmas if that, my aunt was... not the norm. So anyway, my friend Karen told me about tikkun olam, and said her rabbi was a trans guy, like me, and there are eight genders in the Talmud. And I..." Sören swallowed hard - now the tears were starting to come. "Started to wonder if maybe G-d didn't hate me, after all. So I started reading. And reading. And reading. And fell down the rabbi hole." Sören snickered at his own pun, then quickly sobered again. "I went from being a pretty fervent antitheist hating all religion, all gods, to feeling like this was where I belonged, like I was coming home. It was like when I decided I was going to transition, all over again. I told Karen the words from Ruth: 'Your people will be my people, and your G-d will be my G-d.' Her shul - our shul - was the first place I felt like I was truly accepted and had a community. Karen's example inspired me to try to be kinder, try to do mitzvot and tzedakah when I can. She lived long enough to see my conversion ceremony and my bar mitzvah and died of cancer several months later."
"May her memory be a blessing." Anthony took Sören's hand.
"I miss her so much, but it would have broken her heart to see what happened in October -" Sören's voice trailed off, chin trembling, soul screaming.
After a few moments of silent tears - grieving not just the loss of Karen, but his parents, the abuse from his guardians, the bullying in school, the rejection from other men, war, the antisemitism, the feeling of loneliness and defeat - Sören squeezed Anthony's hand. "Anyway, there you have it. I'm a fucking mess, and I live in somebody's basement."
Anthony tenderly touched Sören's face. "Well... I think you're pretty badass."
Sören's mouth opened, and no words came out. He felt a spark of hope, but he was afraid to trust it entirely.
"I want to see where this goes," Anthony said softly. "I'm not running away. Although on my end, you should know I also have some baggage, if... you're up for hearing about it."
Sören nodded. He knew that just like Anthony had a right to know what he was dealing with, he might as well be informed about Anthony's issues.
Anthony took a deep breath. "I got bullied in school for being Jewish, and being a nerd, also those were the days when kids could get away with bullying someone they thought was gay, even though I didn't come out till I was in my twenties. My mum's Jewish, my dad was Church of England, and my dad didn't really get it and he kept telling me to toughen up when I got in one incident or another, and I was... a disappointment to him. I was a soft, sensitive boy who wanted to heal sick animals instead of becoming a 'real doctor'. After I came out to my parents, my dad pretty much disowned me and we never reconciled before he died."
"I'm sorry." Sören frowned and patted him. He felt that protective urge again, and wished he could ease that pain somehow.
"Me too." Anthony leaned on him for a moment.
"Was your mum cool, at least?"
"Yeah, she was... mostly. My mum was more accepting but she really had her heart set on grandchildren and I could tell how sad she was over it and our connection was strained for awhile. Anyway, even if I had been interested in trying with a surrogate or adopting, my last relationship wouldn't have been healthy for that."
"So you're trying to say you've got relationship baggage."
"I've tried to work through it in therapy but it's still lingering around the edges. My last serious partner was a goy, a few years older than you, he was from California and had moved to the east coast for school and didn't understand how good his generation had it with gay acceptance compared to mine and that caused some communication problems and values dissonance, and there were other issues, and after seven years - and one very long year where it felt like a downward spiral instead of ups and downs - he cheated on me."
"Shit, I'm sorry." Sören wanted to hug him, but held back, sensing there was more and hurting for him - Anthony seemed like a good man who didn't deserve to be treated so badly.
"Thanks. Anyway, I've been single for the last couple years except for a few hookups here and there, but I'm too old and tired and behind the times for dating and hookup apps, and after what happened in October I decided to become a little more observant so now I don't really want to have casual sex. Like, I'm not saving it for marriage, but I want it to be more meaningful than..."
"...I already kind of assumed we weren't going to sleep together tonight," Sören said, nodding. "Which is fine because I, ah. I want to? But I need to take it slow, because of..." He couldn't say it, again.
"I know. And it's OK." Anthony took both his hands. "I'm not scared off by you, and if you're not scared off by me -"
"I'm not." Sören wanted to try this. He wanted to bring Anthony happiness, and he had a feeling Anthony could make him happy, too.
"Then we'll take it a little slow, check in with each other and see where we're at." Their eyes met again. "We'll be gentle and careful with each other. We can be safe space for each other."
That made Sören like him even more.
The swans came at last, and Anthony tossed out handfuls of birdseed, and as the swans ate their treat, the look of joy and wonder on Anthony's face went right to Sören's heart. It was too soon to believe that things had aligned for them to find their way to each other, the way Sören believed he had been meant to find Karen and through her, the way home.
But Sören wanted to believe. He looked up at the light in the clouds, and then at the light in Anthony's eyes.
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