“How to Run for Local Office While Building a Community out of Nothing” by Anton Solomonik
Ashton felt excited and worried when his OKCupid friend, Chris, started to put his hand on his leg. Finally the time had come for the sexual part of their interaction together.
There had been a whole conversation they had had earlier in the pizza place and on the long, ambiguous walk along Bedford Avenue, in which Ashton had tried to impress upon Chris the significance of his life, its development: all those times after school in high school, sitting on the curb at Jack in the Box all day; the time he lived in an apartment complex in Texas and watched an anime series about hikikomori and why he liked it so much; the other time he watched an anime series about Alexander, the space emperor, and why that was important; and now, the most recent development: he was going to run for political office in Brooklyn or Queens. And he wasn’t just going to run for the City Council, or State Assembly, or any of the typical first steps one would expect. No. He was planning to get his name on the ballot for the Democratic primary for the 2018 U.S. House Elections.
Ashton had heard from Dan—this dude that he sort of knew—that Carolyn B. Maloney, who had served for 13 consecutive sessions as the representative for the 14th and 12th districts (parts of Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn), was going to step down. Together, he and Dan had strategized that, maybe, in the ensuing power vacuum, it would be possible for Ashton to raise money and awareness for himself as the state’s first, and the country’s third, transgender congressional candidate.
As Ashton was describing these political goals, his hair had flopped playfully over his eyes and he’d gestured a little, trying to derive from his date’s placid face the inspiration he had felt earlier last week in the park, talking to Dan and some other people in that group.
“I’d be the perfect figure for these, like—troubled times or whatever,” Ashton had said to Chris “Kind of like a member of a disadvantaged group, but not. Kind of like a white male, but not. Outwardly and aesthetically conservative but with actual progressive values. Or maybe the other way around, I can’t tell, hahaha.”
Chris had laughed at this.
“So you’re running as a bit?”
“Well no!” said Ashton.
He hated hearing that expression.
“Well I mean yeah, I guess I get why people would say that,” he said. “Like it’s cynical. But I can use my pettiness and just sort of shitty cynicism to do something good for once, hahaha.”
Chris had looked at Ashton, genial and concerned, like a blond dad (he was blond), like someone who had grown up in a family with dogs (he had told Ashton that he had).
“Ashton. If you’re trying to do something good, you don’t need to be to be all sad and negative about it you know. You can just say you’re trying to do something good.”
Chris patted him on the back, slightly critical yet, perhaps, interested and intrigued by Ashton’s complex, self-aggrandizing personality. This was on the walk to Chris’s apartment. Feeling the hand on his back, this casual erasure of the physical barrier, Ashton felt simultaneously excited and almost reassured. He thought for the first time that maybe this date would be successful or at least tolerable.
Now they were in the apartment. It was on the top floor of a two-story house Chris was renting with his partner and two cats (his parents back home had dogs, but he and his partner had cats). Chris led Ashton into a small windowless room, which he informed Ashton served as his “office.” He put his hand on Ashton’s leg while they sat on a futon, which was positioned across from a desk with two large monitors. Chris was a 3D animator for a games studio that made free-to-play online games. His partner was a developer at a different games studio. As they began to touch one another in a consensual manner, Ashton felt that his excitement was possibly a sexual one, though maybe it was not.
Chris was self-aware to an acceptable degree, a nice person who valued niceness. His partner, in addition to his work as a developer, maintained the servers for the Working Families Party of the State of New York. It was this potential, if tenuous, connection to the state’s most influential left-wing third party that was the reason why Ashton was on this OKCupid date in the first place.
Ashton started making out with Chris. He felt the spit in his mouth, that same illicit feeling he remembered when, years ago, he was made to hold a boy’s hand during middle school square dancing; when, several years before that, at a summer camp, he had gotten in trouble after fellating some older boys. The idea, both exciting and isolating, that you could go to this unfamiliar place with people. It was supposed to be such a private and special thing—he remembered hearing this in his health class—but you could go there literally with anyone, with any random person.
“Your mouth tastes like that gum you chew,” said Chris. “It’s nice.”
“Oh, uh, thank you,” said Ashton.
He wondered if Chris liked him, if he wanted Chris to like him. He wanted everyone to like him. They continued to make out. Ashton wondered if maybe, for Chris, he represented a breath of fresh air, or an adventure, or a way to reconnect with youthful idealism. He remembered what Dan had told him that night in the park.
“I think I finally figured out what sex is for!” Dan had said. “It’s essentially a form of networking.”
“Oh my god yes,” Ashton had replied, drunkenly holding up a bottle of the fun craft beer, with a colorful label, that they had gotten from the store. “You are right! ALL sex is an exchange, all sex is transactional. That’s why it’s necessary for a politician to USE sex—I mean look at John F. Kennedy, hahaha.”
“You’re so weird Ashton,” Dan had said, in his ironic, avuncular tone. “I mean I’m feeling a bit weird right now from last night—I went out with Rachel and Medea again,” he noted. “But you’re always like this.”
His acquaintance had the archetypally handsome face of a “white American of European descent,” almost like a member of the Kennedy family himself. But it was the ironic smile and manner that Ashton found most engaging, most relatable. As if he was both being sincere with the person he was talking to, and not, but also flattering the person with the impression that they were both in on the insincerity, that they both understood the lie and the reason for the lie—that they were co-conspirators.
“We are definitely gonna use sex to sell you to the Democratic constituents of Brooklyn and the Upper East Side,” said Dan.
“Oh my god,” repeated Ashton. “I am so excited to do this campaign.”
Dan patted Ashton on the back. It was the same comforting, paternal gesture that Chris had unknowingly replicated on their walk together.
“We are so much smarter than other people,” said Dan.
By “we” he of course had meant trans people. But also, maybe, possibly, he had meant just them, on that specific night, the two of them, Ashton and Dan, and no one except them. They were sitting on the bench in Prospect Park by the World War I monument. Ashton felt sentimental about the monument—it reminded him of the anime about Alexander the Great, in its depiction of masculine suffering and nobility. It was dark now, but, during the day, Ashton recalled, you could see the figures—the veiled face of the Angel of Death, the soldier’s expression contorted into a rictus of ecstatic pleasure/pain as he languished and then was led away.
In the apartment, Ashton tried to swoon into Chris’s arms (Chris was just a normal person and not trans) as if he, Ashton, were dying and Chris was the one who could lead him somewhere better, somewhere normal. They continued to make out while seated together in this fashion.
“Oh wow,” Chris said after a while.
“Oh shit I’m sorry,” said Ashton, jolted out of his reverie. “Sorry I am so bad at this.”
“Oh no, it’s fine,” Chris reassured him. “You are just like… kinda forceful…”
“Oh shit I’m sorry,” repeated Ashton. “I was really jamming my tongue in there. God that’s so gross.”
“What? No, no it’s fine,” said Chris. “I don’t want you to feel like you’re doing something you don’t like.”
“What? No, I definitely like this,” said Ashton.
He started making out with Chris less forcefully, only slightly touching his teeth, and not jamming his tongue into his mouth. It wasn’t that Ashton wasn’t attracted to Chris. It was that the attraction that he felt was almost, in a way, antithetical to the sexual feeling. It was as if maybe the “neural pathways” that normally got “activated” during the sex act were being used for something else. Or, as if the idea and hope of what he was supposed to be feeling overshadowed whatever “real” experience he, or they, were actually having. And yet, everything depended on Ashton being attracted to his date in the correct way—his friendships, his future, the personal and professional life he was trying to build for himself.
Ashton disengaged from the embrace. It was always a reliable means of initiating desire, feeling the genitals of the man. Chis had been saying all this stuff on their walk, about how a person’s looks didn’t matter, gender didn’t matter, about how there were so many different ways for people to be sexually attractive. At the time, Ashton had argued with Chris’s statements, which had seemed to him like empty virtue signaling.
“If you are not spending your life trying to be a hot dude, emulating some ‘fake’ ideal, what are you supposed to be doing with yourself? Like, what else is there in life?” Ashton had said. He had been joking, but also serious. It wasn’t “a bit.”
Yet, now, as Ashton removed his sexual partner’s baggy jeans and boxers in one swift motion, perfected over the course of many previous (unlike this one) only semi-politically-motivated online dates, he felt less sure of himself. What was missing? He had done everything right, dieted, wore flattering pants, yet he still could not engage with other people, sexually or emotionally.
Ashton beheld his date’s engorged genitals. He now considered the masculine aesthetic —the so-called “fake ideal”—he had spent his life trying to emulate. It certainly had little in common with the cartoonish, butch gestures he had seen other trans guys making sometimes—wearing big boots, or driving a truck or whatever (it was true, as far as Ashton knew, that Dan had also once owned and driven a large truck, but that was different—Dan had been aware of the irony of owning such a vehicle, and had made fun of typical trans guys).
No, thought Ashton. Real masculinity came from being powerful and uncaring. It was the peace of mind that came from knowing you were the most important person in your own life—the main character in coming-of-age story that involved sympathetic girlfriends, coaches, and parents, people whose main function in life it was to support you and ensure you discovered the spark of manhood in yourself that would cause you to become a genius. Ashton had, in fact, spent his life trying to be someone who had had that level of unconscious privilege. Yet, now that he had superficially achieved that goal, no one seemed to have noticed. No one, or, almost no one, seemed to know what it was he had superficially achieved.
“You like what you see?” said Chris, again, interrupting his thoughts.
“What?”
“Haha, I’m joking.”
It was just a regular dick Ashton was holding. It was not at all symbolic. Ashton did not know if he felt bad or good about this discovery. He shoved it into the back of his throat, relying on his habitual tropes of stoic masculine suffering and repression. Chris put his hand on the back of Ashton’s head. Chris indicated verbally and using body language that he approved of Ashton’s actions.
What was Ashton’s plan for the Democratic primary for the 2018 U.S. House elections? Dan had explained the situation to him this way:
Carolyn Maloney was ready for a well-earned retirement after serving in the House for 26 years—during which time she had vastly expanded Medicare coverage for women, secured billions in federal funding to help build the city’s infrastructure, and was recognized by her community multiple times for introducing more resolutions, bills, and amendments to the floor than any other representative in the state. The Democratic party wanted to replace her with Jonathan Bing, a former State Assembly member for District 73, who, according to Dan, was best known in his nine years in office for co-sponsoring one of the bills that eventually helped lift the state’s ban on MMA tournaments. The other person who had declared his candidacy was a younger dude, Adrian Rubinsky, an openly gay monogamous “startup entrepreneur” who presented himself as an alternative to inefficient, conventional politicians.
Dan had felt that Jonathan Bing was an uncharismatic candidate and that, even if he were elected, he would not fight for the needs of the district, especially its most marginalized people, with anywhere near the same energy or dedication as his predecessor. He was also dismissive of Adrian Rubinsky, with his feel-good monogamous gay identity and his centrist platform, which emphasized creating jobs, getting rid of loopholes in the federal tax code, promoting LGBTQ-inclusive sex education, and organizing after-school programs encouraging students from a wide variety of backgrounds to learn to code.
Ashton had pretended to disagree with Dan’s assessments, or to have some other, nuanced opinion about the election. In reality, the contempt with which Dan talked about the other candidates drew him in and inspired in him a strange and visceral excitement. It was part of his whole thing as a man, Dan’s, to always seem calm and interested, nerdy and impartial, to be always talking in a benign, amused, professorial tone about different groups and organizations that he was part of or had to deal with. But sometimes the mask would slip, it felt like, and his manner would suggest something else: a kind of cold, unlimited anger towards the world, impossible to ever satisfy or even address. It was at these moments that he was most compelling to Ashton, and that he wished this person could or would somehow become his friend.
“You know, as men, we can’t sit by and watch our community get exploited by this goofy opportunist. I mean that is what he is,” Dan had said.
They were looking at the street from his open third story window. It was surprisingly bright outside, and they were both wearing sunglasses.
“Sure, definitely. This startup politician seems like a real douchebag!” Ashton had replied.
“If this fag is elected to Congress—” said Dan, “which he won’t be—I’ll be gobsmacked if he won’t try to, say, defund the MTA, or… vote for legislation limiting the money we can give to Medicaid. And the Democrats are trying to run some guy who is like 60 years old, who no one cares about, who’s gonna to lose the election, who’s gonna turn the district over to the Republicans!”
“Do you really think that will happen?” said Ashton.
“None of these people care about us,” said Dan. “Our community—which contains, by its very nature, some of the most insightful, caring, interesting people in the world—is screwed. Unless we, you and I, act specifically to change that.”
He did not pause or look at him.
“This is kind of our moment Ashton,” he asserted.
The cold anger beneath the surface of these words moved Ashton.
“Well, if you want someone to run in the primary, I’m your man!” he exclaimed. “A man with no proper sense of himself—a man with nothing inside, who could therefore be all things to all people. Ahahahaha.” He was moved to laughter by his own eloquence, by what he felt to be the truth and the transformative power of what he was saying, to the one person who could get it.
On the futon, Chris was putting his dick into Ashton’s mouth.
“Ashton, this feels really good,” said Chris.
“Oh thanks,” said Ashton, briefly interrupting and then resuming his sexual activity. He felt his partner’s pelvic bones. He surrendered to self-pity.
Suddenly, something brushed against his foot. A large, long-haired cat with orange and white fur had walked into the room and was now walking around on the floor of the “office.”
“Oh it’s my boyfriend’s cat, sorry,” said Chris.
“Oh, that’s okay,” said Ashton.
The cat’s presence made Ashton self-conscious (as if he hadn’t already been self-conscious), but it also reminded him why he was there: the boyfriend and the connection to the Working Families Party. Ashton figured that, if he successfully engaged in sex now, he would be able to ask Chris about it later. Then, he would either talk to Chris’s boyfriend directly; or he would ask Chris to ask the boyfriend to put him in touch with Charles Monaco, the Working Families Party’s New York Digital Director. And this man was someone who, even if Ashton couldn’t ask for a direct endorsement from the party (not yet)—would be able to, in turn, introduce him to key influencers and give him actual, professional advice as to how to run a successful grassroots campaign.
That was what Ashton had told Dan he would do, and that was what he was still planning to do. Ashton turned his attention back to the oral sex he was having with Chris. It was not necessarily a bad plan.
“Sorry, uh, it’s kind of weird with this cat,” said Ashton.
“Aw, let’s get her out of here,” said Chris.
Ashton watched Chris get up from the futon. The sides of his legs were pale but naturally muscular as he tried to pick up and guide the uncooperative pet. Ashton thought that, from this angle, Chris looked attractive.
“Come on,” said Chris, “move it.”
“Don’t you ever feel angry?” asked Ashton. “Like when you said you didn’t ‘fit in’ at school for being gay or whatever. Because it made you feel you were maybe better than other people?”
“Oh, I’m so much better than other people,” said Chris. He was back on the futon. The cat was gone.
“Yeah?” said Ashton, grabbing his leg.
Chris rolled his eyes.
“I was making fun of you. Come on.”
Chris pulled Ashton towards him. They began to make out again. Ashton felt the outlines of his ribs, his teeth. He found himself sitting on his lap. He remembered that they were both approximately the same height. It could actually feel surprisingly natural sometimes, and not unpleasant to be aware of the body of another person.
“I like it when you make fun of me,” confessed Ashton.
“Do you want me to fuck you now,” said Chris.
“Yeah, for sure,” said Ashton. “Wait.”
He looked at him. He tried to think of an innocuous way to say it, something that didn’t sound like it came out of a feel-good, instructive social media post.
“Would you want to try to like… reciprocate the act? I mean the oral sex act. On my genitals.”
“Oh,” said Chris. His eyes widened. “Uh, I would feel really nervous about doing that.”
“Oh yeah for sure I get it,” said Ashton quickly.
“Like it’s a pragmatic thing. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Yeah totally,” interrupted Ashton. “I agree. We should fuck instead.”
***
Even though Dan had said “we are definitely gonna use sex,” most of his campaign ideas had been much more mundane than that. For example, he had wanted Ashton to attend a meeting of the Stonewall Democratic Club of NYC. He had also wanted Ashton and “the team” to go out together to practice asking for signatures. Ashton would need to collect at least 1,250 signatures from registered Democrats in the district in order to get on the ballot for the primary in June of next year. The petitioning period hadn’t started yet, but Dan had wanted them to “get used to the feeling of selling themselves in a public space,” of asking strangers with little-to-no interest in them or their struggles for their time and attention.
“That’s all politics really is,” he had said. “It’s actually how you build a community, out of nothing.”
As part of this initiative, Ashton had gone to Union Square with Rachel last Saturday. Like Ashton, Rachel worked at a tech company. She was also trans. They had a brief conversation about those subjects.
“How is working at a tech company?” asked Ashton.
“It’s great. I’ve always loved the work.”
“Good,” said Ashton. “It’s fine for me as well. I mean it’s a bit boring but what can you do,” he added, attempting to give the remark a tone of irony.
“Sure,” said Rachel. “I guess coding can be a bit repetitive and frustrating.”
Ashton couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic, or if she was nervous and couldn’t tell that he was the one who was actually being sarcastic, as a kind of commentary on the inherent difficulty of all conversation. Even after all these years, he preferred to talk to people as a group, tell them stories about himself, rather than confront individuals directly. On some level, he could not offer much, individually, to most people.
Still, as they walked towards the farmers market, Ashton began to feel less awkward about being in Rachel’s proximity. He took off his jacket. It was an unusually warm day. Ashton thought maybe he looked pretty good, even while holding a clipboard. He thought maybe they both looked pretty good. They were part of the fabric of urban life, modern and engaged.
“It’s too bad he didn’t want to go out petitioning with us,” said Ashton.
“You mean Dan?” asked Rachel.
“Who else?” said Ashton. “I mean, he is the only other guy working on this campaign. Like, besides me.”
“Yes well,” said Rachel, as if Ashton had intentionally said something provocative. “I mean he already has a lot of experience with this stuff.”
“Haha, is that true? I just can’t imagine him asking strangers to sign stuff. Or, like—‘selling himself in a public space.’”
Ashton laughed again. Actually, he had never seen Dan during the day at all, except for that one time in his apartment (when he’d said that it was their moment, and they’d both looked out the window). This reclusiveness was another one of Dan’s poignant vulnerabilities...
“Strangers?” Rachel asked suddenly. “These are your future constituents, my dude!”
All at once, she was loud and boisterous, slapping Ashton on the back. The trans women who were Dan’s friends sometimes acted ironically masculine like this.
“Haha, how true,” said Ashton.
“Anyway, he’s really good at this stuff,” said Rachel. “He’s a smart guy. He did a lot for me when we worked on Congresswoman Maloney’s 2014 campaign.”
Ashton had already heard all this. Rachel was always talking about how important working part-time for Carolyn Maloney’s 2014 congressional campaign had been for her, what a turning point it had been in her life. That was where she had met Dan, and that was when he had convinced her to transition, leave behind her previous office job (with its poor trans healthcare benefits), and break up with her “boring cis girlfriend.” Ashton often saw Rachel at Dan’s apartment—she still sometimes referred to it as “our place”—and whenever he ran into her there, she would hold forth about how important her gender transition had been for her emotionally, how it had made her “stop dissociating” and “start caring about things,” and the mixed, but ultimately rewarding, consequences of that change.
Ashton could not relate. He had always cared about things. That wasn’t the problem. He wished Dan were here, to act as an intermediary between him and these women.
“I guess it’s hot that you admire him so much,” said Ashton.
“Heh.”
Rachel smiled pointedly but said nothing more on this topic.
During the course of the next hour, Ashton and Rachel found five registered Democrats who were willing to sign their petition. As Dan had predicted, no one cared that the date written on the petition—March 18, 2018—was eleven months from now. March 18, 2018 was the start of the official petitioning period, and—supposedly—any signatures they collected before that date would be considered invalid. Dan had figured they should go out to collect signatures anyway and see what happened.
“It’s a bureaucratic gatekeeping thing and it doesn’t matter. And the people who are signing these things won’t care. These are standard tactics, Ashton,” he’d said, and he’d mostly been right.
Then one person, the sixth would-be signer, wouldn’t give them his address. This man, a typical-looking (Ashton thought) District 12 resident holding a reusable shopping bag and wearing baseball cap that said “The Center for Fiction,” listened patiently while Ashton and Rachel explained who Ashton was, and why he was running for the Democratic House seat for District 12. They talked about Ashton’s platform as a candidate: tenant protections, infrastructure repairs, Medicare expansion, ending the war on drugs. They mentioned that Ashton—the candidate—was trans, and how his experience within the LGBTQ community informed his desire to serve the district’s most marginalized residents.
The man interrupted them.
“Listen, I support what you’re doing. I support New Yorkers helping New Yorkers. I just don’t feel comfortable giving out my address.”
“I understand,” said Rachel. “The thing is, you kind of have to put your address down, or it’s not valid.”
“Yeah,” Ashton put in. “It’s not like we’re telemarketers.”
He was trying to sound less brittle and more jocular than Rachel, leveraging (he hoped) his male privilege to attract more supporters.
Rachel looked at Ashton sternly.
“We’re definitely not telemarketers,” she agreed.
“Hm,” said the man.
“Would you like to give us your address?” said Rachel, her expression a bland mask of political efficiency.
The man put down his shopping bag.
“Okay,” he sighed. “You’ve convinced me.”
He elaborately searched his pockets for a pen, did not find one, and then used the pen attached to Rachel’s clipboard to write his signature. He handed Rachel the attached pen. He looked at her intently and shook her hand.
“I’ve signed your petition.”
“Thank you,” said Rachel.
“You have my support. You really do,” said the man emphatically. “We need all kinds of people on the ballot.”
“We absolutely do,” said Rachel.
She vigorously shook his hand, until the man finally let go. After he left, Ashton looked at the clipboard.
“I guess he didn’t put down his address.”
Rachel did not answer.
“Well, we can probably look it up,” said Ashton. “Like, from the name?”
Ashton watched Rachel as she kept looking in the direction of the man’s departure. He saw the city’s residents energetically engaging in commerce, lining up in front of food stands and farmers’ market tents, talking to each other in groups.
“Oh yeah, that man probably thought you were the trans candidate,” Ashton felt compelled to add.
Rachel turned to him.
“Why would he think that?”
“I guess when most people think of trans people they think of trans women. They always ignore trans guys. It’s an unfortunate combination of how people are sexist towards women and sexist towards men.”
“I don’t think that was what was going on,” she said coldly.
Rachel walked a few steps and put her shoulder bag down on the concrete park barrier. Ashton followed her.
“I’m used to it,” said Ashton. “It does suck.”
Rachel put her clipboard inside the bag. She took out a pair of sunglasses from the bag and put them on. Their lime green frames matched her top.
“Listen, my dude,” said Rachel. “I’m feeling kind of tired.”
“Oh yeah, I get it,” said Ashton.
“I think I might be done for the day,” said Rachel.
Before Ashton could say anything else, she picked up her shoulder bag and started to walk towards the train.
“Wait,” Ashton shouted.
But she did not turn around. She was gone.
Ashton looked around. A group of people were eating hot dogs. Another group of people were gathered around a large Bernese Mountain Dog, petting and gesturing at the dog (he knew the type of dog because he had looked up dog breeds when he had first started talking to Chris about his family). No one noticed that Ashton had been yelling at his canvassing partner. He tried to think of the people as his future constituents and not strangers. He resumed his task.
In the next hour, working alone, Ashton was able to collect three additional signatures. He went to a nearby library to prepare for his speech. Later that same day, at the meeting of the Stonewall Democratic Club, Ashton felt anxious about what had happened at the farmers market, but he was able to channel his anxieties into a speech that he gave to the whole club, where he touched on topics such as campaign finance reform, inefficiencies in the city’s public housing program, and the need for more accessible healthcare for trans and gender non-conforming individuals. Just when he thought for sure Dan was not going to show up, he was there. He had come with Rachel. She seemed happy about the speech. They both seemed happy.
Free of his usual inhibitions after the excitement of the speech, Ashton embraced Dan.
“That was a great speech. I loved your speech,” said Dan.
“Thank you,” said Ashton.
***
Ashton felt the hand on the back of his head, the other hand pushing him into the futon. As he had sex with Chris, he thought about Dan. He looked at the hardwood floor, with its slight, underwhelming irregularities. His self-pity reached a kind of crescendo. He had deliberately positioned himself as Dan’s instrument. He wanted Dan to use him. He felt seen by Dan. He wanted Dan to see him now.
Ashton focused on a space on the floor where the gaps in the wood converged. What would they even do together? Maybe Dan would force Ashton to perform oral sex on him—and his genitals would turn out to be just as upsetting as anyone else’s genitals, if not more, and that would be meaningful for both of them. Or maybe he would just smirk at Ashton, in his paternal, avuncular way—and that, too, would have a sexual and emotional meaning.
Really, Ashton had not thought it through that far. He really was “a person with nothing inside,” just like he’d told Dan, but not in a way that was necessarily bad. Even though Ashton feared and slightly loathed most people, he also had a high capacity for admiring others. And he knew that Dan was similar to him in that way. He did not need to have sex with him—or go to his apartment—to be totally certain of that fact.
At the height of this feeling of self-pity and tragic certainty, Ashton heard the door open. A bespectacled, bearded man in a bathrobe peered into the room. He saw Ashton. Chris stopped his pelvic thrusting.
“Oh, sorry,” said the bearded, rumpled person.
He spoke in a creaking, low-pitched voice. He did not close the door. Lying on top of Ashton, Chris moved his body slightly.
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” asked Chris.
“Yeah,” said the person.
Ashton knew this was the boyfriend—the one who maintained the servers for the Working Families Party. He had been in the apartment this whole time. The boyfriend slowly shifted his weight from side to side.
“Sorry, I was just looking for Sandy Cheeks,” said the boyfriend, coughing.
“Oh my god,” said Chris, jerking his body to one side in mock frustration. “She’s not in here. Why don’t you check in the kitchen?”
“I already checked in the kitchen,” said the boyfriend. He coughed again, covering his mouth with the sleeve of his bathrobe.
“She probably got stuck behind the washing machine,” said Chris. “Sandy Cheeks is the cat,” he explained to Ashton. “He’s always bothering her,” he added, indicating the boyfriend.
Ashton turned his head. He watched as the boyfriend proceeded to search the entire “office” for the cat, looking behind the futon, between the collapsible shelves, and under the desk with the two monitors. As Chris had predicted, he failed to find the cat. He finally gave up, coughed into a tissue and left. Ashton tried to wave at him, but he was gone.
“Sorry about that,” said Chris.
“Oh yeah, no problem. It’s cool that you guys have a washing machine,” said Ashton.
“Haha. They put it in the kitchen for some reason? But yeah, it’s great.”
The boyfriend had not closed the door all the way, and Chris got up to close it after him. Then he maneuvered towards the desk, one hand covering his midsection.
“I’m gonna play some music now,” he said.
When Chris turned on the computer, Ashton saw that the desktop background on both monitors was a picture of Chris standing next to the boyfriend in front of a suburban house, alongside Chris’s parents (Ashton could tell who they were) and three dogs. The dogs looked like generic retriever mixes. They did not appear to be any specific breed. Chris opened the music player program. Ashton heard the whimsical synths that marked the start of the song “Kids” by MGMT.
Chris sat down heavily on the futon.
“Oh man,” he said. “I’m sorry. We’re gonna have to finish kind of quickly here.”
“That’s cool,” said Ashton.
“Cool,” said Chris.
He leaned back on the futon. Making sure, swift, rhythmic movements, he began to manually stimulate his—at first—only semi-erect genitals. He made rapid progress. After approximately 30 seconds, Chris reached towards Ashton with his other hand. Ashton thought about the logistics of what Chris was proposing.
“Uh, no, I’m like all good,” said Ashton.
“Are you sure?” asked Chris.
“Yeah, definitely.”
Chris briefly looked concerned, but soon resumed his activity. He closed his eyes and made, again, rapid progress. He finished with at least two minutes left before the end of “Kids,” sighing and resting his head on the back of the futon. After some thought, Ashton put his arm under and around Chris’s neck. They both sat like this, fully nude, through two additional songs from whatever playlist Chris had on—“My Name is Jonas” by Weezer and “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World.
“I’m getting kind of cold,” said Chris finally. “You sure you’re, uh, all good?”
“I’m totally fine,” said Ashton. “Thank you.”
“Cool,” said Chris. “Well, you don’t need to thank me,” he added.
He began to put on his underwear.
“Love You Madly” by Cake started playing from the speakers mounted above the desk. Ashton listened to the jaunty, insinuating singing.
“I guess we’d better wrap this up,” said Chris, now wearing, again, the same baggy t-shirt and jeans that Ashton had helped him remove earlier. “My boyfriend’s been sick all week.”
“Oh yeah, I know how that is,” said Ashton.
He started to put on his own clothes. He had never had a boyfriend or long-term romantic partner before. He paused.
“Oh hey,” he began, trying to sound casual. “Speaking of which, is your boyfriend still doing that stuff for the Working Families Party? Like, the servers and stuff?”
Chris waited by the door for Ashton.
“What? I think so?”
“Cool,” said Ashton.
“Yeah, he goes over there maybe once a month. He’s pretty busy with his day job though...”
“I definitely know how that is,” said Ashton. “I definitely get being busy.”
Ashton finished putting on his boxers. He had gotten them in a size “small,” in a fine check pattern, to emphasize his relatively small hips, achieved through years of (post-testosterone) meal portioning and jogging. He put on his black pants and tight button-down shirt. He laced up his large boots, which had nothing to do with his masculinity or his desire to emulate masculinity.
Chris walked Ashton to the door of the apartment. On the way, they passed through the kitchen, where he showed Ashton the washing machine, remarking, again, on its inconvenient location. They did not see the boyfriend or cat on the way out.
During the train ride home, Ashton wondered if it would make sense to try to go on a second date with Chris. He had not gotten in touch with Charles Monaco, the Working Families Party, or the boyfriend. For a moment, Ashton wondered if his thoughts had any reality outside of himself, if there would ever even be an election, a primary, or an endorsement. But he was not in his early twenties anymore. It was not useful to think in those terms. It was just as Dan had said. The key was to keep going to events, to keep messaging people, to keep building a presence in the community. If he didn’t message Chris, Chris wouldn’t message him back. If he didn’t message Dan, Dan wouldn’t message him back. It was obvious. Ashton wondered if—as the U.S. Congressional representative of the 12th district—he would still feel as alone.
Anton Solomonik is a writer and illustrator living in Brooklyn. He’s the co-host of the World Transsexual Forum, a discussion panel and open mic series for trans writers and artists. His first book, Realistic Fiction, will be published in April 2025 by LittlePuss Press.
