I took her shopping last night, at the Target near my old neighborhood. We both got new purses: hers was her first, this smoky blue thing, and mine was brown with a messenger bag type strap, chosen because it was somewhat smaller than the pink behemoth I had before. It'll be nice to have my right arm free when I walk now. Driving back to her apartment, I decided on a whim to make a u-turn and pay a visit to my old house, with her consent.

    It was my first time seeing it since I had moved 11 months ago. I took the route I had taken so many times on my bike to and from the community college. I pointed out all my old stomping grounds, and wondered whether it said more about me or about Mesa that I considered Panda Express a stomping ground. There was the pitch black backroad I rode down every night, lined with horse properties that had been swallowed over the last twenty years by urban sprawl like mosquitoes in amber. I showed her all the old spots I'd stop to sit in the dirt and look at the stars. The houses that, two years ago, were lined with Trump signs that I'd always run over. I wondered why I remembered those nights so fondly, despite them being among the lowest points in my life. There was the patch of undeveloped government land I'd ride through sometimes and where I found those old rusty machines. The fence I'd hop over with my 40 pound cruiser despite it being the same distance to just go through the gate.

What was I doing?

Why didn't I just turn around?

There's nothing here.

    As I was telling her that I hoped my old gate code would still take, I pulled up to the gate and pulled out the keycard for my new place. I put it away and laughed when I remembered where I was. The code still worked. I drove past the spot where I was nearly bitten by a rattlesnake cause it was too dark for me to see. I realized how much I missed the desert and missed the stars, though even their majesty was not enough to pierce the fog of testosterone and depression back then. I could feel them touch me now. I pulled up to the house. It looked so strange without cars in the driveway. I got out and leaned on the roof and stared. The metal was cold. It was always a little bit colder up here than the rest of town.

Hey, you should get out.

She got out.

Look up!

She looked at the stars with me.

    I got to see this every night. At darker times in my life it felt as though they were taunting me with their beauty. Here we are, the pinnacle of natural wonder, yet we make you feel nothing at all. I know now that they couldn't help but be the way they were. I know now that they are as lonely as I was, quietly defying the surrounding vacuum. I know that I couldn't help it either, thought that didn't make me feel better. I told her about the crazy guy who lived across the street. All his animals. The time he had to make a GoFundMe for his medical bills when he decided to fuck around with a rattlesnake. I told her about the guy with the trailer covered in purple lights he'd use to cart kids around every Halloween. I never got to sit in that trailer, but it made me happy every time I saw it. I guess there was life here, after all; it just wasn't mine. There are so many children in this neighborhood. I was one of them. Even with the constant sound of cars, the streets around the new place are so silent. More silent than the desert. Half the houses here are just for Minnesotan retirees to play golf in the winter. It feels like home in its own weird way, but there are days that I feel as connected to this city as the snowbirds do.

    We got back in the car. She started crying. She told me she was so tired of being nervous in public like she was when we were shopping. I didn't know how to tell her that I, over a year further into transition than her, was tired of it, too. I told her the joke that my granddad always told me when I was worried about how I looked. No one's gonna be looking at you when you're with me, dear. I knew that wasn't the real problem. It doesn't matter who sees us. This wasn't something I could take away. I wished I could. I stared straight ahead, down the cul-de-sac. The stars, the kids, the Halloween Trailer. None of them meant anything back then. They were jewels in a crown of thorns. Now they're stars in a sky of their own.