I arrived at the bar to meet Lee for our first date and found him leaning against the frame of the wall-sized open window and scrolling through his phone with the furrowed concentration of a scholar, and I said Hey Lee and he looked up smiling and said Hey Jackie and patted the pale wooden booth beside him where I sat bracing myself against a minor evening chill, and Lee said Gorgeous night huh and I said Yeah it's serial-killer weather and he grinned staring at a mailbox graffitied with "You and Me Both!" and he said Maybe if we're lucky, and I surveyed the bar interior where young professionals and athletic punks were drinking tall lagers or tiny whiskey sours in dark mahogany booths and I turned back to Lee and said You look handsome tonight, and he laughed and said You look pretty too and I said Am I the first trans girl you've gone out with and he shrugged staring at the moon and said Everyone's trans, and I rested a hand on his hairy shin and said Everyone isn't trans and he laughed again and smoothing a pink fleck of glitter off his shirt said I'm going to fetch us some provisions, so as Lee ordered at the bar I stared at two crows perched atop a parked taxi as if imitating a promotional roof-topper and I telepathically asked the birds Do you guys think I'll ever be loved, and Lee returned holding two glasses of beer and a small white plate of deviled eggs and I said Thanks captain and he gave a curt affirmative nod with a distant expression, and biting into an egg's soft rubbery flesh I said So what did you do today and he said Well I was going to bike to Queens but my app servers crashed so I spent the whole day hotfixing and I said while smiling You have an app, and after sipping his beer he said It's not terribly impressive once you realize all these apps just poach each other's code bases and I nodded etching an exclamation point with a clear acrylic nail into my beer glass frost, and he said What did you do today and I said I wrote some and walked to the park and butchered a tofu stir-fry and Lee smiled saying What was it you were writing, and it had been some stupid sestina about growing up lonely by the ocean and I said Are you attracted to me Lee and he looked at me with considerate incisiveness before saying No I'm not, and I nodded glancing across the street at a bar with a glowing red marquee where young women were dancing by the curved altar of a jukebox and Lee said I thought it would be fine but I'm straight, and I stared into his face finding him strikingly pretty with high cheekbones and a small chin and ink-black eyebrows and I saw us holding hands in a swan boat on the Central Park lake, and with a small glass jar in his other hand Lee scooped lake water into the boat until our shoes grew soaked and the swan sank at an oblique angle, and I said I should probably head out then and Lee nodded pulling me into a warm brief embrace and I exited the bar walking south down the darkened avenue, and as the meager stars glimmered through the blank haze of light pollution I wondered if I would ever be loved or was that reserved for people who were better at this, and I thought back to two hours before the date when I was at a beauty salon receiving a set of leaf-green acrylic nails and waiting in the damp sanitary air for the gel to dry, and when I rummaged through my purse for my wallet I saw smears of green globbed off onto my phone and headphones and the inner fabric lining and I hissed Fuck, and after managing to pay in an inky hubbub I scurried to a nearby pharmacy where I purchased acetone pads and tissues and took them outside to a storefront garbage can, and I stood above it trying to smooth the displaced folds of gel paint back onto the nails until the relentless slippage and dripping streaks forced me to take acetone pads to my fingers and hands, and I squeegeed away the green as clear liquid slipped down my wrists until all that remained were my moist colorless hands and the clear lustrous claws that stayed intact despite their desaturation, and as I stood there smelling of sweat and polish remover and trash fumes I thought if being a woman was something you did and not just something you were I'd do it over and over and over again, I'd get a thousand sets of acrylics and wipe clean the scattered mess each time and take my foolish pellucid nails to a hundred boys who didn't like me, I'd don the minor signifiers of newfound womanhood that I had thought for most of my years would kill me and still might kill me, I'd stand in the pinkish sunlight as acetone dried on my skin and birds gazed at me from powerlines until I felt I was in love not knowing with whom, I would text Lee You fucked it and sit on the pharmacy's stoop watching women walk in empty-handed and leave with tampons and brow pencils and Easter candy and I would feel like I was one of them, I was one of the people on Earth who wanted to be loved and I would ask for it from everyone I met until one of them guessed I meant it.