In One Person

you,” John said to me. “Watch yourself. Don’t call him ‘Donna.’ Just try not to let that name slip.” In our phone conversations, I’d noticed that the director of nursing was careful to use the
he
and
him
words while discussing “Don.” John not once said
she
or
her
or
Donna
.
    Thus prepared, I found my way to Huntley Street in downtown Toronto—a small residential-looking street, or so it seemed to me (between Church Street and Sherbourne Street, if you know the city). Casey House itself was like a very large family’s home; it had as pleasant and welcoming an atmosphere as was possible, but there’s only so much you can do about bedsores and muscular wasting—or the lingering smell, no matter how hard you try to mask it, of fulminant diarrhea. Donna’s room had an almost-nice lavender smell. (A bathroom deodorizer, a perfumed disinfectant—not one I would choose.) I must have held my breath.
    “Is that you, Billy?” Donna asked; white splotches clouded her eyes, but she could hear okay. I’ll bet she’d heard me hold my breath. Of course they’d told her I was coming, and a nurse had very recently shaved her; I was unused to the masculine smell of the shaving cream, or maybe it was an after-shave gel. Yet, when I kissed her, I could feel the beard on Donna’s cheek—as I’d not once felt it when we were making love—and I could see the shadow of a beard on her clean-shaven face. She was taking Coumadin; I saw the pills on the bedside table.
    I was impressed by what a good job the nurses were doing at Casey House; they were experts at accomplishing all they could to make Donna comfortable, including (of course) the pain control. John had explained to me the subtleties of sublingual morphine versus morphine elixir versus fentanyl patch, but I hadn’t really been listening. John also told me that Don was using a special cream that seemed to help control his itching, although the cream was exposing Don to “a lot of steroids.”
    Suffice it to say, I saw that Donna was in good and caring hands at Casey House—even though she was blind, and she was dying
as a man
. While I was visiting with Donna, two of her Toronto friends also came to see her—two
very
passable transsexuals, each of them clearly dedicated to living her life
as a woman
. When Donna introduced us, I very much had the feeling that she’d forewarned them I would be there; in fact, Donna might have asked her friends to stop by when I was with her. Maybe Donna wanted me to see that she’d found “her people,” and that she’d been happy in Toronto.
    The two transsexuals were very friendly to me—one of them flirted with me, but it was all for show. “Oh, you’re the
writer
—we know all about you!” the more outgoing but
not
flirtatious one said.
    “Oh, yeah—the
bi
guy, right?” the one who was coming on to me said. (She definitely wasn’t serious about it. The flirting was entirely for Donna’s amusement; Donna had always loved flirting.)
    “Watch out for her, Billy,” Donna told me, and all three of them laughed. Given Atkins, given Delacorte, given Larry—not to mention those airmen who killed Miss Frost—it wasn’t a terribly painful visit. At one point, Donna even said to her flirtatious friend, “You know, Lorna—Billy never complained that I had
too big
a cock. You
liked
my cock, didn’t you, Billy?” Donna asked me.
    “I certainly did,” I told her, being careful
not
to say, “I certainly did,
Donna
.”
    “Yeah, but you told me Billy was a
top
,” Lorna said to Donna; the other transsexual, whose name was Lilly, laughed. “Try being a
bottom
and see what
too big
a cock does to you!”
    “You see, Billy?” Donna said. “I told you to watch out for Lorna. She’s already found a way to let you know she’s a bottom, and that she likes
little
cocks.”
    The three friends all laughed at that—I had to laugh, too. I only noticed, when I was saying good-bye to Donna, that her friends and I had not once called her by name—not Donna
or
Don. The two transsexuals waited for me when I was saying good-bye to John; I would have hated his job.
    I walked with Lorna and Lilly to the Sherbourne subway station; they were taking the subway home, they said. By the way they said the
home
word, and the way they were holding hands, I got the feeling that they lived together. When I asked them where I could catch a taxi to take me back to my hotel, Lilly said, “I’m glad you mentioned what hotel