“When was the last time you did stage work?”

my friend(?) asks me,

as if she doesn’t know the answer is

with her

ten years ago.

I don’t understand if it is

an innocent question

or a cutting insult,

a judgment about me

leaving the stage

(temporarily?)

and a theater group

that soon disbanded afterwards

anyway.

And I can’t tell her the real reasons

i never perform anymore,

how the chronic pain

was not only harsh

but also scary

and embarrassing.

If I finally got a lead role,

would I have to forfeit it?

Or shyly ask to have an understudy?

What would I do

if blinding pain

behind my eyes

struck ten minutes

into Act I?

Maybe I would have been okay.

Maybe I would have persevered.

Maybe I should have tried.

Or maybe I would have ruined
a whole performance or
even an entire production.

How do I tell her that I no longer wanted to play men

or characters with facial hair,

that there was no room

on small town stages

or even in comedy clubs

for me to express

my queerness

to express

my trans-ness

to express my

me-ness?

How do I tell her

how much

the magnets on her fridge

that say

“straight but not narrow”

meant to me?

Or how I was still afraid to come out to her

anyway

(so I never did)?

How do I explain

there is more freedom

on the page for me,

more so than

even if I had won

the female lead role

I almost beat her out for?

How do I tell her

when I crossdressed

for Greater Tuna

and the director said jokingly,

“You three make the ugliest women,”

I had to bite my tongue

until it nearly bled

to keep from saying,

“Wait right here, bitch,

while I grab my wig and makeup

and a real dress

and show you

what true feminine beauty is”?

I wish that

my friend(?)

had phrased the question differently.

I wish that she had asked me nearly anything else.

If she had said, “Do you still act?”

I would have chuckled

while thinking of my

every day cis straight male good Christian boy persona

and said, “Every fucking day

(I pretend to be someone else).”