Narrator:

In for three, hold for three, out for three.

In. Hold. Out.

I'm waiting for the subway.

It's been a long day and I'm tired. I can feel my spine trying to curve me through the
floor. My ribs ache under the constant constriction of my binder, and I try to
straighten up my shoulders without sticking my chest out enough to be obvious.
Things only work so well when you're a D cup, when you have narrow shoulders,
when your baby face and pretty features give everyone the opportunity to read you
exactly as you are and aren't all at once if they spare you more than a glance.

I'm so tired I feel like I'm slipping through the cracks. Like I could close my eyes for a
second too long and miss my train altogether. I stare down the twin shotgun barrel
tunnels to try and stay focused against the paranoid press of people whose
intentions I can't possibly anticipate. Try to tell myself they don't care enough to call
me ​it.​ Name five things you can see.

Sensible backpacks. Commuting trainers. Reusable plastic bags clanking with after
work wine and thawing frozen pizzas when they're set down on the platform tile. The
legs of trousers splattered with watery mud from rain. Uncomfortable heels from the
brave.

I never learned to move through the world as a man. I avoid eye contact, I don't take
late trains, I walk through well lit streets, I have my headphones on and my music off.
I shrink into the corner of my seat when someone throws themselves onto the bench
beside me - loud and drunk with testosterone. If there's a privilege to how I am, I've
never noticed it. I'm too busy looking down.

The platform is crowded and there's no wall to lean on, only a gouged hole for the
track running east and another for west. Inner and outer lines like clockwork. Imagine
yourself in a safe place. Behind a locked door, behind two locked doors. Surgically
carved into a public facsimile of the body you want. Four inches taller. Three inches
broader. A jaw at right angles and a voice that doesn't give you away as soon as you
open your mouth. Take yourself to a safe place, where no one can touch you.

I close my eyes for a moment, and everything goes quiet. The platform is empty
when I open them again, and the neon board announcing trains has gone blank. Is
this my safe place?
In, hold, out.

Box breathe. Square up. Face yourself.

Breathe in for three. Hold for three. Out for three.

In, hold, out.

Put yourself in a safe place. Behind a pane of glass over the paper over your cracks.
Is this my safe place? Haven't we been here before?

I'm waiting for the subway.

My hoodie puffs out strangely under my jacket where the cheap zip is slightly too
long for the fabric, distorting the shape of my already distorted body further, and I'm
trying not to pull at it too much and draw attention from the other commuters.
Anxiously tugging on clothes to hide your body isn't moving through the world as a
man. Slumping already narrow shoulders to take up less space isn't standing like a
man. If nobody is looking at me like a man, then why do I feel the hair on the back of
my neck start to rise with a shiver when I realise my performance is imperfect?

It could be because today, someone is looking at me.

I get looks, I'm used to them. It's not that I don't pass so much as I'm never sure what
I pass as. A student pushes by me smelling of strawberry shortcake vape smoke and
red bull, the sequined vagina emblem on her tote bag catching the light as I look
back down at my feet. People who write essays about not shaving under their arms
like it's a radical act, who carry tote bags with stylised labia or wear pussy hats to
protests, will tell you that passing is bullshit, that gender is a construct and we should
all be free to wander around with our hair and clothes however we want them to be.
That your appearance should mean nothing in terms of social respect.

But we know better, those of us stuck between the neat lines of pink and blue. Who
don't pass as either end of what others deny is a spectrum. The its.

We get looks.

I know that the angle of my shoulders and length of my hair and softness of my
features determines whether I get acknowledged with condescension, smiles, or
outright hostility. I don't make eye contact in public places. I don't look at the mirror in
public bathrooms. It isn't gender that makes me hold my keys between my fingers
after dark, it's experience. I'm never not noticing. That subtle sideways glance the
lanky teenager next to me gives when trying to work out if I have tits or not? Not
subtle enough.

I'm waiting for the subway, and someone is

Crowd:
looking at me

Narrator:
I try not to get paranoid. I know that nobody would bother watching me, for the most
part. I know I don't stand out, it's a choice. I know my drab colours and oversized
clothing blend into the background. If it wasn't for the security camera on the wall
overlooking us like a comforting big brother who won't be quite enough evidence to
convict our inevitable attackers, nobody would ever even know I was here. There's
nothing I can do about what people see when they look at me that I haven't already
done - I never learned to move through the world as a man, nobody ever taught me.
I can't wave a wand and reshape my inadequate clay into a more acceptable version
of my insides. God created Adam from less, but I don't have hands steady enough to
sculpt a masterpiece.

The platform is busy, no wall to put my back to as I'm shuffled closer and closer to
the screaming edge of the track by the urge to not be touched by other people. No
escape. Close your eyes. Find your safe place. Ground yourself. Name three things
you can smell.

Musty water where the ground under the tracks never fully dries in winter. Your own
fear sweat and terrible body spray because you never got a chance to make
mistakes as a teenager so you have to crash through them all now. Something
sweet, sickly, perfume with a hint of metal. Meat.

By the time I open my eyes to figure out where the look crawling over my skin is
coming from, it's gone. The flash of eyes next to me is a normal flash of eyes, a
middle aged woman looking through me as she zones out. No metal, no meat. Just
apathy.

I appreciate apathy. Apathy is safe.

Crowd:
are you sure
As soon as I close my eyes again, the look is back, crawling over me like it's never
gone away. Maybe it won't. Maybe I'll always be paranoid. Maybe I'll never not feel
like an imposter in my own skin.

The woman looking through me has teeth like barely blunted razors. Maybe she
wants to know how someone else's skin feels too.

Box breathe, face yourself.

In for three, hold for three, out for three.

In, hold, out.

Is this my safe place? Haven't we been here before?

I'm waiting for the subway. The air is damp with other people's sweat and breath and
it's hard to breathe with this much compression on my ribs. The lights seem
somehow too bright and dim all at once, the fluorescence of a hospital corridor or a
doctor's office, waiting on a table in a paper gown. Evidence is no respecter of
personal boundaries. Blame doesn't have a gender, but we all know which one it
would have, if it did.

The tracks yawn out before me in the wet haze. The air would probably fry with
electricity with this much water in it, if only it had a conductor.

Crowd:
how much force would it take to tip over the edge?

Narrator:
Intrusive thoughts are normal, they happen to everyone. The sudden urge to step out
into the road when a bus drives by, the impulse to stab the nearest person when
holding a sharp knife, the inability to not cause trouble for yourself, a flash of
yearning for the void. I look across at the tunnels yawning black before me and I
wonder - what if the void is already here? Intrusive thoughts are normal, right?

Crowd:
no

Narrator:
If you live a life on edge then how can you tell what's a normal rush of adrenaline
and what's the certain, bone deep knowledge that someone in your vicinity means
you harm? How can you stop an interaction before it starts? How can you avoid
being called an it when half the time you're thinking that yourself? If paranoia is
common sense, then how can you let it go?

Focus. Ground yourself. Name four things you can hear. Asthmatic breathing of
someone nearby with a cold. Your own heartbeat in your ears. Whispers in an
accent you can't understand. Whispers that sound like your name until you try to
focus on them.

Crowd:
what is it

Narrator:
I take slow, measured breaths against my crushed ribs and hope I look like too much
trouble to punch. I ignore the whispers chasing themselves around my brain and the
fact the man beside me has heavy, leather wings sprouting slowly from his back.

I'm waiting for the subway, not thinking about the way breath that isn't mine and
beings who aren't me and aren't human are starting to encroach into my personal
space. There's nowhere to go, no escape. I'm waiting for the subway. I'm waiting.

In for three, hold for three, out for three.

In, hold, out.

I'm waiting for the subway.

Waiting is a strange game when you can't tell if the shivers skittering over your skin
are just the cold, or anxiety, or the mundane discomfort of low blood sugar and
shallow breaths. If paranoia is common sense, how can you tell if you're being
unreasonable? I can feel someone breathing on my neck, wet and hard like a dog
panting, but whenever I look it's only the other commuters staring back at me. Blank
eyes, sharp teeth. I stop looking. Don't cause trouble for yourself.

The light is different, now. The flicker of the crappy lights in the pub smoking area
you linger in before the heat lamps stop being enough incentive to wait for your lift
home and you think, fuck it, I'll get the subway. I pass well enough today. I don't look
like I want any trouble. The football crowd will have cleared out by now. Nobody will
be that drunk on a Wednesday night. It's only three stops.
Three. Three things you can see.

Crowd:
what's the worst that could happen?

Narrator:
The other commuters don't seem to notice the lights coming in and out. The platform
is so packed that my shoulders and elbows are in contact with others, and I try not to
think about the textures of fur and bone pressing through my jacket, into my skin
which is barely thick enough to withstand the elements that batter me at the best of
times. Fangs grazing my neck, the cool trail of what is either saliva or blood following
them like the shame of a panic attack in public over something that should be
nothing.

Life didn't stop after that night. After nobody will be that drunk, after the football
crowd will have cleared out, after it's only three stops. After it.

In for three. Hold for three.

Just like sharks keep swimming to survive and boys don't cry because they might not
stop once they've started, life remains relentless. I keep using the subway. I keep
failing to pass. I keep not knowing how to move through the world as a man. I keep
standing on platforms and hunching my shoulders and thinking about five things I
can see and four things I can hear and three things I can smell so I don't have space
to think about--

Crowd:
what is it? I can't tell.

Narrator:
The growl that sounds from behind me is too low, emanating from deep in the belly
of something with teeth and claws. I close my eyes. Try to find my happy place.
Something from beyond the light in one of the tunnels laughs. I wonder if it's at me
again.

In, hold, out.

I'm waiting for the subway.

The apathetic rustle of a hundred bored commuters is drowned out by the roar rolling
up from inside the shotgun tunnels now, but when I glance at the security camera
screen in the corner the platform is empty, save for a smear of darkness I assume is
supposed to be me. I don't look like a man or a woman or anything at all. ​I look like an
it​.

Name three things you can feel. Hands on my elbows, talons at the pulse on my
throat, the rumble under my feet as something far more threatening than thunder
gets closer and closer. The noise is loud enough to thrum through my entire body
and I try to identify anything beyond the unnatural hands on my skin and shrill
pounding of blood in my ears.

It's not the normal scream of the subway, the distinctive screech that prevents
conversation and makes words like 'I don't want any trouble' even more useless than
usual. The sound grows like a physical force, and I have no interest in getting
punched again so I turn to push past the inevitable hands on me and run up the
steps to safety. I don't care if it's unmanly to turn and flee, nobody ever taught me
how to make the leap from prey animal to predator, not when-

Crowd:
it's packed, make some room.
Can anyone move down?
This one can, whatever it is.

Narrator:
I don't want any trouble.

Life didn't stop. I can't leave, maybe I never left. I'm waiting for the subway. I'm
waiting.