It’s going to be a big night tonight!

Sylvester took the lovely Brazilian coffee I’d made and tried to look sensible as he sat at my kitchen table. It’s not easy to get him to understand the complexities of the transgender world, but I do my best. It’s rather like trying to teach a monkey to use a calculator. I eyed the bunch of bananas on the windowsill.

“Ok,” I said, ever patient. “I’ll try to explain it again. Think of it like this. I am going through changes.”

“I’ve seen your boobs!” said Sylvester.

“Shut up,” I replied. You know Sylvester really can be quite coarse. “There are shifts in my body, but also in the way I think and process things. Whether or not it’s the hormones, or just that I have become more sensitive, more kindly, more thoughtful, I don’t know.”

At this point Sylvester opened his mouth to speak and I gave him a sharp kick under the table.

“And with all these changes has come a different view of things. A different way of looking at the world,” I said. “But — and this is the complicated bit, Sylvester, concentrate now… But the world at which I am looking is also changing. It’s changing a lot. So, it’s like there’s two moving targets.”

“Oh, I get it,” he said, his brow knotted like an ancient oak tree’s roots clinging to the earth.