Since there are few forces in the universe more powerful than inertia, mine, which was lunar, led me to try to drink a few more times from what had been my life spring, night after night, but the dragon-men refused to accept my offerings the way they once had. I wasn’t presenting myself as I should; I wasn’t the same, and I received other liturgies. I discovered that the beauty I’d managed to see in myself in the past wasn’t a gift my lovers granted me; it was what I allowed to emerge on those nights. It depended on me, on how I moved, on how I transformed myself into a goddess, and on my exquisite submission. The hands that once accepted a dirty delicacy, the hips that adapted to the rampant femininity I offered them, no longer danced with me the same way. The moment I realized that in that intimacy I was a man like the others, that there was no trace left of me, that they desired me for the wrong reasons, I wanted to disappear, to turn into liquid and slip down a drain, becoming detritus. The spring was dry, and I had to say goodbye to the dragons, my heart broken and my skin cold. I threw out all my feminine clothes on the second of February 2000, and it was clear that I had gotten rid of more than skirts, dresses, stockings, and shoes. I stood in front of the garbage can until my legs went numb from the cold. I remember the sleet melting on my face and slipping down my recently shaved head. When I couldn’t stand the shivering anymore, I left and didn’t look back.
