Confessions
It was a suicide, of course, and though I think the Church has changed its position on the matter in recent years, his extended family retained older sensibilities, and the casket was closed to avoid the cousins from Pennsylvania asking too many questions. I saw his Aunty Lyra, and his cousin Andy, who married a divorced woman and adopted her daughter. That’s why they moved; no one liked that.
His kin were important, and he had wanted me to know them. That was one of his things, when we were all sitting on chairs with itchy, red upholstery, four years ago at the Campus TransMasculine+ Support Circle. That was the first time I met him.
“Hi, I’m Thomas, and uh, three fun facts about me: I’m the youngest of seven, and I went to Catholic school, and I like cats.”
In the process of trying to avoid looking at the group leader—a junior with hair dyed blue and green—his dark eyes had landed directly on me. Seven was my lucky number. It was auspicious.
Reaffirming my memory at the funeral, I realized I retained more information than I supposed I had, though I had always wondered what his family knew of me. The winter after the support circle, upon finding out we lived a mere hour away from one another, I visited his house, a charming little Tudor with a white front door, met four out of six siblings, and ate leftover panettone and salmon from Christmas. They were friendly, overly friendly, in the way Italians are, but Thom, strangely, became colder to me. Always avoiding touch until we were alone in his little room, his hands, trembling, excited, would dance at the ends of my hair, my shoulders, and upper arms. Kissing me once on each cheek, he was shy and bold at the same time.
“Should I have come as a girl instead?” I thought I passed well enough at that point that they wouldn’t know.
“No, no, you’re fine, they know how I am. They just want me to dress nice for the holidays,” he said as he slid off his pinafore and came even closer to me, hands dancing.
After the funeral, I was put in charge of room cleaning duty, which, though arduous and unpleasant—which is why they shunted it to me—was surprising. I was a nobody. I told Bethany, his eldest and favorite sister, as such and she said, as if it couldn’t be more clear, “You were the best friend.”
His ex-friend. More than a friend. Thom had never called me his boyfriend; not to my face, at least. It was only my friend, or, when he was at his best, his happiest, my dear, my Ollie. Mostly just you. But semantics didn’t matter, and I found myself back in the little room. It was sort of green-gray, though in the February light, it just looked gray. It had belonged to one of his elder brothers and then he and Barbara, another sister, had shared it, and when Barbara had gone to live in Syracuse after undergrad, it was his to keep.
The mother couldn’t talk to me—well, she couldn’t talk to anyone—so Beth had explained the job. She sounded all right, but clipped, clinical, far away.
“Everything we’re going to keep is mostly out of here. Anything with a yellow Post-it should go down to the living room. That stuff’s going to go out to Pennsylvania; they’ve got more storage there. Whatever’s left goes into bags, and that’ll go down to the garage—we’ll just throw it out.” A pause, and then, a little softer, closer: “Oliver, you’re welcome to keep anything.” I shrugged, and she left me to it.
It took longer than it should have to get everything downstairs for the Pennsylvanians: a bookshelf still full of Young Adult fiction and poetry and a Marilynne Robinson work I had given him for some birthday or Christmas; his bedside lamp, taken off the top of a table that I was told would stay in the room; toys he had shed since childhood but remained hidden in the closet and under the bed while he went off to college. Some little things—whatever his family had not seen as meaningful or relevant enough to keep but too specific for the Pennsylvanians—remained. Thom’s Saint Sebastian portrait was still hanging up, destined for the bag. That was a gift from me too, albeit a smarmy one.
Our first date, though neither of us called it that, was at the Starbucks across the street from the University—a choice made in spite, since I worked at the Dunkin and loathed it.
“Catholic school, huh?” I said over an oat milk latte. “That sounds dreadful.”
“Oh yes,” he replied, twisting the knotted friendship bracelet on his wrist around and around. “They made me wear a uniform. A girl’s uniform.” When he got excited, his pretty cow eyes always went a little wider, a bit buggy.
“Hm, did they force you to go to Church too?” I had no idea what Catholic Mass was like, being born to slackful Presbyterians and deliberately atheist myself, but from what I knew of it, it was droll. All that sitting and standing and kneeling.
“I liked going to Mass. I go to the 10 a.m. a block away from here every other Sunday.”
“…Oh.”
“Is that bad?”
“Nothing, I—I’m just surprised. With you being…”
“The Church is very good about trans people!” And Thomas, with a flour-ish, began to prattle on about something having to do with Pope Francis, who I thought was the Polish one, but in fact was not, and under the table, beneath all the layers and boots, our feet were touching.
Our first split happened after I had met his family. His cow eyes were glossy and red when we saw each other again in January.
“I don’t think this relationship is working out,” he said.
“Is it your parents? Was I disrespectful? Are you all right?” I touched his shoulder, and he flinched.
“No, no, you’re fine, I just can’t—with a guy—” And he started crying again, and I did not, testosterone having burnt all the tears out of me. We did not speak for a week.
Then, he came to my dorm, wanting to talk. He’d said about five words, teasing me for my unmade bed when our knees touched and he leapt on top of me, kissing and biting and clawing at my shirt like he was trying to tear beneath it and rend my flesh.
I loved sex, and loved having it, though, typical for our kind, most of what I had with Thom consisted of us rolling about on the bed and rubbing up on one another until one or both of us came (or neither of us did, and we simply tired of the sweat and the spit). Thom wanted it, surely. His eyes always shone a certain way, his hands, greedily, heavily, running up and down my waist and legs and chest—but right afterwards, he’d always get up, leave me cold, go into the bathroom, and wash or cry or do something else I was not privy to.
I had already gotten dressed by the time Thom was back, grumbling something about cravings and intrinsic disorders.
“So being trans is fine by you, but being gay isn’t?”
“Well—yes!” He went on to say, well, it isn’t about being gay or desire; it’s about action and choices.
I wanted to hear very little of it, until he said, in the middle of his spiel: “I mean, it’s not like we can have children!” He always spoke a little shrill.
“…So you and a cis man?”
“Let’s not talk about that,” he said, and patted me on the head, like one would a dog, or a child.
Rolling up the portrait to go into the trash, I felt my cheeks twitch, filling with heat and melting into a frown. I had no right to be angry. I was not Beth, who had been the first to hold him, after his mother. I was not her either. I was not Barbara, who swapped scary stories with him from the top bunk, or any of the unlucky six. I was not the friends or acquaintances from college or church, who’d find out through a third-party text. I was not the one who had to deal with his financials, or the funeral arrangements. I was not the one who found him.
Thom and I had not even been friends at the end—something of my own doing. And yet, my fingers were still tearing the paper corners of the print, angry at Thom for leaving me to clean up his mess, to throw out the things I had bought him, for killing himself and binding us forever when I had want-ed to leave, for choosing to die rather than be someone like me.
We remained chaste for most of our friendship. The longest (and final) interlude we had gone without, ah, knowing one another had lasted for more than a year. When it would happen, it would usually come with tears and another break, though we could never stay away from one another long. We were both psychology majors (though he was on the education-psych path, and I planned on going into law), and loved to read (though I preferred memoir, and he fiction), and took our tea with lemon and our coffee without sugar, and, outside of that support circle, had very little taste for getting to know the rest of the transmasculine student body, who were too theatre kid for me and too hedonistic for Thom.
I did have needs, and on occasion, they’d be satisfied. I tried to be discreet about it, because irrationally, though he’d never call it a relationship, I’d feel a little of the guilt Thom must have felt constantly. Once, he told me he’d seen me walking alongside another man that weekend.
“And is anything wrong with that?”
“You do what you want,” he said, smiling, but his nostrils flared, and I knew he was angry.
One of the books bound for Pennsylvania had escaped my notice: a copy of Augustine’s Confessions. I knew what was written inside: property of th. c. riello, and throughout the margins of the book, little scribbles and underlines. So beautiful. Must remember this. Show O. He’d carried it around constantly sophomore year, until the corners of the pages went round and smooth.
I knew that his opposition to my sexual proclivities was not just possessiveness (though, in my petty way, I hoped it was), but an attempt to save my soul. Thom never said anything about it; he wouldn’t dare. Even at his most zealous, he was never fire-and-brimstone, but in his way, I could tell he wanted to evangelize to me.
“I wish I could do the things other people could do,” he told me once, late at night, while we had taken ten minutes off from studying for finals to sip Keurig coffee and chat. In my dorm, I wore very little, and Thom was watch-ing me stretch my bare legs, eyes shining. The last time we had slept together was four months before, which led to Thomas ghosting me for three weeks.
“You only live once,” I said.
“No,” he spat bitterly, “we don’t, and that’s why I—can’t. Isn’t it so sad to see it your way? That this—this is it?”
Well, I suppose his way was rosier, but for all I knew, his laugh and his tinny voice and his hands and eyes were gone to me regardless of whatever lasted into the next life, covered in six feet of overturned earth. I would take the book with me, one of only a couple things I’d take. There were some notes in my pocket too, mostly schoolwork, that the family would not want to keep but were ephemera of his I could not bear to know were thrown away.
To Thom’s credit, he was no hypocrite; he spent as much time sorting juice from milk donations at the Interfaith Food Pantry as he did preaching to me, and in that sort of Christian activity, I joined him happily.
One of the best memories—one of the last, only weeks ago, when we were both happy—came after some holiday supply run I had done with him. The afternoon light was strong by the time we finished, and in Thom’s little room, the green-gray had turned a bright, pale sort of color, like springtime. He laughed happily, a tinkling of silver bells, and he had held my hand and brought it up near his mouth, and I thought he would kiss it, but he merely blew some air on it. His breath was warm.
It was late now, and the room was dark and sparse. Almost everything was out, and when I moved, I heard the empty echo of my shoes on the hardwood floor. The bed and the table that was beside it were the only things that’d stay. They put anything they’d found on him, in his pockets, after, in the table’s drawer. Well, the family had the note; I hadn’t read it, but I knew that I was mentioned. That’s how they knew to invite me to the service. Whether he cursed me or apologized or said goodbye, I didn’t want to know.
The last time I had been in the room, before now, and after that warm, buttery day, was a week or so afterwards when he had called me over for—for —I couldn’t remember. I couldn’t remember. I shook a little, and I had to grip the bedside table so my legs would not fail me.
Whatever it was I was there for, I was there, and sitting on Thom’s bed, and he was next to me, our sides close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, its absorption into mine. He always ran so warm. Was he cold when they found him? Or still warm, so close to life if not for the silence where his heart should beat loud, clear, strong enough that I could hear it, however far away?
I had laughed at some stupid joke he’d made and thumped Thom on his back, and we looked at one another. It had been a year for me, and a little more than that for him. I stopped laughing, and his eyes shone, and he said, sweet and shrill as ever, “Oh, Ollie!” and then we were kissing, and again, and I was laughing.
He had whispered to me, during, “I love you, I love you, I love you more than anything, I love you more than everything,” and I sang out, cried aloud, echoed him.
After, I shut my eyes, hid my face in between Thom’s chest and his inner arm, serenaded by his healthy, living heartbeat, my own arm clutching what-ever it could hold of him, hoping that if I slept, he would not disturb me and break the quiet, serendipitous moment. This, I thought, is my Mass. But too little time had gone by before he was up again, out of the room, and my eyes stayed shut, hoping he’d come back and hold me. After some time, I got up too, and went where I’d never gone.
He was vomiting. We had barely eaten that night, and it had already come up, but Thom was still heaving dryly into the toilet, his back rippling with violent shudders.
“I-I shouldn’t have done that—” Another heave.
“Was I really that bad?” I had tried to be clever, breezy, but it came out much too raw and made me sound wounded.
“I wasn’t supposed to do that. I wish I hadn’t—I shouldn’t have done any of that—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Thom had told me time and time again that it was just about sex, carnal desire; love had nothing to do with it. No one loves love more than God—but what he had said to me was fresh in my mind, its sweetness going sour, and I knew when he apologized for everything he was apologizing for that, too.
“I’m going to Hell,” he muttered. “It’s over, I’m going to Hell.”
I was suddenly sick of it, all of it, the years I had spent feeling dead, and virginal, and judged by him, waiting for the moment he’d decide he wanted me, the way he’d cry, and guilt me and leave me, and I’d be lost until he de-cided he didn’t hate himself anymore and would come back, rinse and repeat.
“And what about me? I’m the same as you; I’m worse, I’m an atheist, where am I going?”
Pugnacious, I did not know what I was challenging him to say. Oh, Oliver, of course you’d be saved. I would never believe in a God that would damn you! Of course he would not say this, but there was still a wild, romantic, puerile part of me that wished he would. I was dirty, still shirtless, sweat and cum cooling between my legs, and the more he muttered, the filthier I felt. I wanted him to kiss me, clean me, and though he would not, I still did not expect Thom to go slack-jawed, turn from me, back down to the toilet, and say, so quiet I barely caught it:
“I…I don’t know…”
And that was it. When I got home that night, before stumbling into the shower, drunk off a case of Stella Artois, I texted him: I don’t think this relationship is working out, and turned off the ringer.
The last time we spoke, I was retrieving the jacket I had left at his place, a $150 winter coat from Zara, though I’d had it for so long the pockets were starting to felt up and some buttons had been lost to the wind. I didn’t want to stay long, so I left the car running to give me some excuse to zip off as soon as I could. He produced the coat quickly, but as I turned to go, he reached for my hand and murmured, “My Ollie…”
“I’m not your anything,” I said.
Then I was gone, and then he was gone.
I didn’t let him have it. But, remembering this, I pressed my hands together, and though mine were bigger and rougher from years of the hot water and carcinogenic dishwashing liquid at Dunkin, I pretended one of them was Thom’s, and that my touch had damned him, and saved him, and he was here now, packing up his things, not to go into a moth-infested attic in Pennsylvania or some trash yard even further than that, but perhaps to a cramped little flat we had bought together and were thinking of moving a cat into.
The moon shone in through the tulle curtain—it was due to snow in the night—and I wanted to leave Thom’s family well alone. After this, I would have nothing more to do with them, and I was sure they did not want me here now that the work was done. But before I did, some curiosity took hold of me, and I went to the bedside table.
I opened the drawer. I closed it.
Eyes blurring, I crawled into his bed, sheets neat and square, and I wondered if it was Thom’s doing, before he did it, or his mother’s afterwards. I put my face to the right pillow, the one he liked to sleep on, and I sniffed and sniffed for a whiff of him, but I couldn’t smell anything. I cried knowing that my tears were washing away whatever was left of him: his eyelashes or skin cells or sweat, which only made me cry harder.
“Tommy, Tommy, Tommy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I said, though I didn’t know for what, or for whom. To Thom, to me, to God, who I had never wanted more to be real. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
In the drawer, there were two things: a wrinkly, dustless little Bible, and buttons from my coat.
Stephen Piazza is an English major at SUNY Albany from Mount Kisco, New York. His work has previously been featured in ARCH Magazine and will be performed at the University’s 2025 annual student play festival.