I knew my relationship with Rohan had failed when I saw the cactus. It started in the living room of the two-storey house and burst through the floor into Rohan’s bedroom, directly overhead. The bottom half and the top half weren’t connected at all, but Rohan used plaster and wood to create the illusion of ceiling and floor splitting. I dimly remembered that Rohan claimed to create another unfeasible art project with every breakup.

“How do your roommates deal with the blockage in their common space?” I asked, though I knew the answer. Rohan’s roommates were used to finger trees and toothpick robots everywhere. It was part of the household, plus much of that stuff ended up at Burning Man, where it boosted their whole camp’s status. “So,” I said. “This is the breakup conversation.”

Rohan and I had been inseparable for nigh on three years, sharing all our secrets and every erogenous zone a million times over. The two of us had created our own language, genders, sexual orientation, literary genre, cuisine, dance moves, political party, time zone and school of film criticism. A civilization, lost.

The exit interview was one of those peel-the-skin-from-your-face awful rituals that I wished I could skip. It was like we’d both been undercover infiltrating each other’s lives, and now we stood revealed as moles.

“This is neither an angry cactus nor a cactus of ill will,” said Rohan. “It’s a cactus of appreciation, welcoming the beginning of friendship.”

I acknowledged what Rohan was saying, and said if I had a cactus, it too would be an optimistic one. My hypothetical cactus would be sort of like a Christmas tree, only more tinsel and less angel, and it would exude respect and goodwill.

“You don’t need your own cactus,” Rohan said. “This cactus is for both of us.” And it was nice that we shared something after all. And I had to thank Rohan’s housemates for giving up their view of the television from their sofa, all for the sake of our post-breakup positivity.

Rohan and I hugged and traded gifts purchased at the ninety-nine cent store nearby. His big Anime-boy eyes shone, reminding me of when we met, protesting the mayor’s anti-homeless policies. He’d pumped his (back then, it was her) fist in the air, and I’d wanted that hand inside me and around me. Back then, I’d been a boy. Since then we’d swapped genders.

The disgustingly amicable breakup only made me feel worse, because I couldn’t rage. Instead, I felt that same gut-dropping sensation that you’d feel if you were in an elevator and heard the cables snapping. As if your innards knew you were about to fall and wanted a head start.

I’d taken this golden shower enough times to know what came next. First you feel like you’re going to die, then you realize you’re not going to die, which is worse, and then you try to reinvent yourself totally as a single person but the past assfucks you in a not-nice way, and finally you give up struggling. It all feels like being forceably relocated to Cleveland.

It’s best to distract yourself. A lot. I considered getting drunk, but in my limited experience this would lead to weepy three AM phone calls and a self-loathing hangover the next morning. Which might be fun, and maybe even a normal part of the grieving process. But it’s hard to know the horrendous consequences of something and do it anyway, no matter what they tell you on Montel and Maury. It takes willpower to do something knowingly self-destructive. I was too lazy to try.

The best alternative is to party-hop like mad. Luckily, I live in San Subsisto. Every night, a hundred parties, performances and fundraisers. I went home and dug through my hundreds of unanswered emails, and found an invite to the Sardonic Erotic party happening that night. Dress To Confess. It took so much work to create an outfit fitting that description, it drove Rohan from my head for a while.

Finally I staggered to SOMA, bedecked in the sort of outfit for which you’d use the word “bedecked.” The event happened in a big yoga studio. There were mats everywhere and the walls had grooves. Everyone there was ninth gender or eleventh planet, it made me crave a fifth of whiskey.

Someone onstage was telling a story about Baudelaire and sex with boiled potatoes, and someone else had a combined kiss/spanking booth to raise money for sex-positive causes. Everywhere I looked wolf girls traded bites with rubber cops, nurses and soldiers. All of the helping professions were represented in latex. I ended up with a group of people plotting a men’s encounter group where Robert Bly, or someone pretending to be him, would have a “talking stick” shoved up his ass and if you wanted to talk, you had to hold the stick.

Flirtation can be a substitute for human closeness, for a little while, just like eye candy can provide empty calories. And by the time those things stopped working, the yoga studio people kicked us out because they needed to crank up the furnace at one AM or the room wouldn’t be hot enough for the next day’s Bikram. An hour of makeup removal and I slumped into bed.

I woke up in a Wong Kar-Wai movie, the last place you want to be on a Saturday morning. The world moved and I didn’t. Tricks of light and cloud shadows gave hints to anyone watching that I was trapped in an internal monologue that couldn’t move past its first line. The world changed from monochrome to garish color without any warning.

I ate an unholy amount of bran cereal and took a long bath. I thought about calling people but didn’t. I watched television shows I hated. The sun made to crash and I was still naked and androgynous. I had to get out of there, so I threw on bright red long johns and a leopard print straitjacket and ran out the door. I would stop by at least ten events. I would have human contact in abundance, even if it killed me.

My party-hopping marathon started political. Gay Shame was protesting the latest anti-homeless ordinance, one of those glam-for-a-good-cause bashes that remind me why I love San Subsisto. The police were too afraid of getting glitter on their uniforms and looking camp to arrest us. I danced on the street until I fell into the Hole in the Wall with Corey, a skinny punk boi with exoskeleton and crutches. Euphoria pulled Corey and me into a heartfelt conversation, we really bonded and I opened up all the way. I can’t remember what we talked about, but it was deep and then I craved grilled eggplant. I lost Corey on the way to the eggplant place, but by then it was time to go to the opening of Suz’s “disco hubcap” gallery show, where I nibbled broccoli florets and drank cheap wine with design students who thought farting was artistic. I had to run to Ronnie’s circumcision reversal party. Thank goodness we didn’t actually have to watch him undo his circumcision, he’d done it already and we were celebrating with honestly some of the best Mojitos on Earth. From there on to Santayana’s CD release show at the Ass-End, the newest artspace in the Mission/Potrero neutral zone. By eleven PM I had that Jacuzzi-drowning feeling alcohol sometimes gives me. From then on it was a blur, but I can safely say I did not connect with anyone in a way that would matter a year later.

At three AM, I hooked up with Harley, whose gender I didn’t know and who didn’t know mine. It didn’t matter. Time was I couldn’t get even half naked with someone without a long discussion of pronouns, performativity and which erogenous zones gelled with each person’s self-image. That sounds like a pain, but it was comforting and fun to make bodies out of words before showing skin. But Harley and I met in a noisy club and neither of us felt verbal, plus I realized I didn’t need to thrash this stuff out any more. Maybe my time with Rohan had solidified my vision of my body as female-with-complications. The idea-weave still covered me all over, a millimeter thick, I didn’t need to explain it any more. Thanks to Rohan.

I dragged Harley back to my place. In my bedside lamp’s anemia, I saw more clearly a mostly shaved head, juicy pierced lip and Elvis Costello glasses. Denim everything. I sort of hoped Harley wouldn’t unspool the he/she thing for me. It excited me not to know. I would tear off Harley’s clothes, explore every inch of that body with my fingers and tongue, and still would have no clue what Harley was. Harley might name areas I shouldn’t touch, but maybe only because they tickled or felt weird.

I fell onto my back in my eagerness to wriggle out of my tights, still clawing at Harley’s jeans. It took us way longer to get naked than a careful process would have. I bit and licked elbows and nipples, petted the graceful stomach. Naked, Harley’s body stretched out taut and lean, like a basketball star’s finger. Under my touch, nipples and pubes quivered to life, and then Harley rolled me on my back. I tried to focus on the way Harley’s touch could change, now claws and now feathers, without any pattern. But part of my mind fell to wondering how long Harley and I could go on without laying M or F tags on each other. Could we fall in love, form a relationship, set up house? What would happen when we had to introduce each other to friends?

Then we were licking between each other’s legs and I forgot to speculate. Harley found that groove in my inner thigh that always sets me off, and I found just the right way to nuzzle Harley’s pubic bone. We kissed and ground our bodies together, and I got to use my new vibrating dragonfly thingy. It lasted hours, but still felt kind of wham-bam-thank-you-sir/ma’am/other. By the time we’d both gotten off, the sun was poking through my blinds. Harley left while I still had the oven-baked biscuits feeling I get after casual sex.

Once I was alone, though, I felt sad — my first impulse after sex with a third party was always to call Rohan and check in about it. Rohan had always been psyched to hear I’d gotten laid (and vice versa). Now I suddenly felt like the best part of sex was gone forever, no matter whom I played with.

Sunday I fell in love, for a while anyway. The day started much better than Saturday, even though my sleep schedule was so fucked up I was on New Zealand time. Pancakes at Kate’s, coffee at International, bargain bins at Amoeba. I only thought of Rohan every other minute.

Then I went for hot chocolate and met Misha, who spoke only in adverbs. That wasn’t the only reason I found Misha irresistible, but it was certainly a major factor. I had once dated someone who spoke entirely in verbs and I’d had a boss who’d spoken only adjectives. To me, adverbs seemed a much more sensible choice. They were less pushy than verbs, less passive-aggressive than adjectives. Adverbs gave me a feeling of someone doing something somewhere, but it didn’t have to be Misha or me.

“Happily,” Misha said when we first met. Misha had long black hair in a ponytail, a lean face except for a nearly round nose, and snail-shaped sunglasses. I sort of thought Misha might be a girl, but I figured I’d know one way or the other eventually.

Misha and I shared a couch at the Canvas Cafe, where brilliant art and terrible music combine to turn all your neurons into barbed wire. I often do my thinking there.

We managed a long conversation, even though Misha clung to one part of speech. I adored that discipline, and the longer it lasted the more I loved it. “So how do you manage to train yourself to speak only adverbs?” I asked at last.

“First perfunctorily,” Misha responded. “Sometimes confusingly. Soon enough, neurally, psychologically flexibly.”

“Ah.”

“Quite often lucratively?” Misha asked. I realized Misha wanted to know what I did for a living. I rattled about my social worker gig, and Misha nodded.

By now it was dinner time, and I was swooning into Misha’s orbit. “Hungrily?” I asked Misha, since by now I’d gotten into the adverb habit as well. Misha nodded and we went to Gordo’s for burritos.

I started noticing more things that excited me about Misha, like the rainbow-dyed hairs along the backs of both hands. This was someone who believed in adornment. Misha took deep but dainty bites of burrito. I imagined how that kinky head would feel on my shoulder after we’d lain together long enough for my arm to fall asleep.

Then Misha said the word that dashed my romantic dreams. I think it was “aside,” or maybe “askance.” Whatever. It was a preposition. I think the disappointment showed in my eyes. And then damage control came too late, even though it was all impeccably adverbial.

“Most imperfectly,” Misha said. “Occasionally prepositionally. Gramatically likewise!” Hand gestures and wide eyes added a whole other layer to this torrent.

“It’s okay,” I said at last. “We can still be lovers. Possibly even fuck buddies and confidants. I just don’t think I could ever be romantically involved with someone who confuses adverbs and prepositions. I’m sure you’ll understand.”

Misha nodded. There was nothing more to say.

So we went and had sex. And it was good. We might have waited longer to go to bed if there’d been the prospect of a relationship, so in one way Misha’s mistake liberated us. I suppose it was inevitable that someone with such tight linguistic control would turn out to be a bottom, and a loud one at that. It’s always the control freaks who want me to steer in bed. I think Misha was worried I would stop what I was doing if I heard another wrong part of speech, so all I heard were moans and the word “very” over and over again.

“Very very very very very…”
Which made me think afterwards. Very what? The adverb thing had enchanted me early on because your first instinct with adverbs is to wait for the word they’re modifying. With my partner who spoke only verbs, her utterances obviously had stood alone. And my boss who’d spoken only adjectives had mostly said synonyms for “good” and “bad,” obviously in reference to my work. But I literally hung on every word Misha spoke, because of my training to await the grammatical punchline.

So I ended up feeling like a relationship with Misha wouldn’t have worked out. It was all just a rebound thing. But the sex was great, and I foresaw a fifty-fifty chance we’d do it again. I could always use another lover.

Oh, and we had sex at Misha’s place, not mine. This meant I got to see the incredibly tidy (and tiny) apartment overlooking Golden Gate Park. One desk, one chair, one bookcase and one pillow on the bed. Not someone who tolerated clutter or got into relationships with people who gave presents.

I went home and thought about the difference between body parts and parts of speech, until I dozed into a dream of getting lost at the bottom of a well of snakes.

The phone woke me. I muttered something, and Rohan’s voice said, “Were you sleeping? At ten on a Sunday night?” Before even fully waking, I ran through a thousand flavors of emotion, from bitterness to a glowy warmth. “That’s not like you,” my ex added.

This felt like the first conversation I’d had with another human since the Gray Davis administration. I babbled about my adventures and the trail of broken ideologies I’d strewn around town. “I’ve been having a blast,” I said, then felt guilty.

“I’ve missed you, too,” Rohan said. Weirdly, talking to Rohan again made me feel more secure in our separation, like maybe healing really had happened in some marrow tunnel while I was distracted.

We burbled about stuff, almost as if our brains held a cache of information we’d set aside to share with each other. Our caches had overflowed and it was easier to unspool them than to hasten the process of deleting them.

But after we got off the phone, I didn’t feel so restored. Monday crouched in the corner of my field of vision, waiting to push me down with its awful weight. Without non-stop partying and partnering, how could I keep depression at bay? I supposed I could throw myself into my work and become a model employee, but it never pays to raise people’s expectations. “Just let me get through this,” I told Monday, which tilted its bovine head, amused.

When you start talking to days of the week and your name isn’t Mr. Rogers or Gomez Addams, it’s a sure sign you’re cracking. I collapsed back into bed and tried to squeeze back into the cavity I’d left behind earlier. But it was all the wrong shape, or maybe I was.

Charlie Anders is the author of Choir Boy (Soft Skull Press 2005). She’s the publisher of Other, the magazine of pop culture and politics for the new outcasts. Her writing has been published in the anthologies Pills Chills Thrills & Heartache, It’s All Good!, Pinned Down By Pronouns and The Anti-Capitalism Reader, and in Salon, the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Tikkun, Genre, and ZYZZYVA. She is the author of The Lazy Crossdresser (Greenery Press, 2002), a guide for anyone – especially those born male – who feels inadequate in women’s clothing.