In 2014, six months after moving to London, when she felt she was starting to get her bearings, Aoife found a queer book club online called the Orchid Tree Readers. Catering to ‘anyone LGBTQI-identifying of any gender expression’, but clearly more on the femme side judging by its members’ profile pics, it seemed as good a place as any to make friends in this new and overwhelming city.
It was not. Aoife sensed this almost immediately upon entering the upstairs room of the small vegan café in Kentish Town. She was late and sweaty, her black hair — so carefully arranged in the office bathroom — plastered to her forehead from the oppressive Tube journey. The eight women around the table were all poised and thin and pretty, mostly white, in their mid-to-late-twenties and dressed in an oddly uniform fashion of muted denim shirts over white t-shirts, often with a little gold or silver chain running under the collar. Aoife had, for reasons now unknown to her, worn a childishly bright pink-and-yellow tie-dye tee. Which, she could tell from the group’s frowns, probably revealed the massive patches of sweat underneath.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the woman who’d been in the middle of an introductory spiel as she looked up at Aoife with a pitying smile. Her white t-shirt read simply: LENA DUNHAM. ‘This is booked for a meeting?’
‘Oh — I’m here for that.’ Aoife stabbed a hand into her tote bag and pulled out her copy of Genevieve Isaacs’ The Silken Thread as proof. ‘I’m Aoife? My name should be on the page?’
‘Ee-fuh?’ the woman repeated, scrolling on her MacBook as if she required further confirmation. ‘Er, I don’t see any… ‘
‘It’s spelled with an A.’ Aoife waited patiently, used to English people’s unfamiliarity with the name. ‘A, O… ‘
‘Oh, right! There you are.’ The moderator gave a still pitying smile. ‘Have a seat. Welcome.’
As she’d grabbed a chair, trying to steady her breath, ignoring the way the girl next to her covered her nose and shifted slightly, Aoife made eye contact with a person sat across the table. They — at the time Aoife assumed she, because trans and non-binary gender identities were still new to her — smiled calmly back. They were mixed-race, with a square and kind-eyed face, short dreads and a Radiohead t-shirt. Aoife liked Radiohead. She didn’t smile back though, but looked away, still flustered from having barged in late.
The meeting progressed, with Harriet the moderator asking if everyone had read The Silken Thread. Nods all around. Aoife had finished it last night. She’d enjoyed the central relationship between the sisters growing up in Rwanda before being driven apart by civil war, especially the parts when they reconnected as adults in Paris, one of them having transitioned into a man. But some of the language she’d found unnecessarily dense, and the time-jumping structure had left her at times confused as to when and where they were and who wanted to do what and why. Surely the basic task of a novel was to tell a story, so the reader always understood what was happening?
The others in the group seemed to have gotten more out of it than her. Each put forward their own analytical spin on it as they went around in a circle. Kate with the top knot had seen it as a post-structuralist deconstruction of fairy tale tropes. Alice with the bowl cut and nose ring had seen it as a study in the difficulty of true connection under late-stage capitalism. Harriet herself had admired the writing, but found the use of war and the pain of BAME people slightly unethical.
And suddenly it was Aoife’s turn, and she had no idea what to say.
She stared down at her copy of The Silken Thread, as if the abstract cover photo of sea waves or the plaudits from critics could help her. Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize – Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction.
‘Er, I thought that… it was good, it was really… atmospheric?’ She looked up at the blank faces of the others. Alice with the bowl cut grimaced at the word atmospheric. ‘But… to be honest, I thought it was really confusing at times, like, the language? And I lost track of where we were in the timeline. Like — when Isaro has the dream about dying, I didn’t get whether… she was still a she at that point, or if — ‘
‘Ouch.’
The interjection had come from Kate with the top knot. Aoife stared at her. ‘Sorry?’
Harriet leaned forward to explain: ‘We say ouch or ow when someone within the space has found something that someone said… triggering or difficult? We then give that person the space to explain why they chose to call it out. Kate, would you like to elaborate on what you felt about what Aoife said?’
‘Yeah. Absolutely.’ Kate cleared her throat. ‘Aoife. I don’t know you as a person, so I don’t know what kind of… energy you normally put out? You know, I’m sure you’re not a arsehole.’ She gave a little laugh, echoed by the others. ‘But I just found it… really upsetting, and troubling, that you refer to this trans character with the pronoun she when this character is, in fact, a trans man.’
‘I agree with that,’ said Harriet. Aoife looked to her, prickling with embarrassment. ‘I did find that a little troubling, as Kate said. I think we have to be really mindful about these things when discussing issues of marginalisation, and this novel about these BAME and trans characters. You know, it does matter. Words matter.’ Her eyes rested on Aoife. ‘Especially when you’ve entered into this space today with… you know, putting yourself into this already-established space, I think it’s really important to check yourself and leave your own, you know, entitlement at the door. If we had any trans people in the room, I think they might have been really offended by what you said.’
‘No, absolutely,’ said Aoife, nodding, her voice small. ‘I just… because the novel calls the character she for the first half, I thought that… it was okay for me to do that, too. I don’t have a problem with trans people. I totally support trans people.’
‘Right.’ Kate nodded protractedly.
Aoife stared around the group desperately. The other women looked away. God, she felt itchy and hot in this stupid tie-dye t-shirt. And God, she realised now how this had all been a mistake. Not just the t-shirt, or coming to the meeting, but moving to London at all, when she was just a culchie from Castletroy who didn’t get Man Booker-nominated novels, who didn’t know how to use the right terminology, still the same awkward girl from school who’d never fit quite right in her clothes or a room or a town for that matter, but who’d had a sexuality, at least, a way of being drawn inconveniently to pretty girls like the ones around her now, which she’d taken as God-given proof that she was somehow special, somehow worldly enough to move to London and find friends, maybe even a romantic match, who would make her finally whole, finally a person — but all there was were these flat stares, and more judgement, all of it not so very different from back home.
‘Uh, can I say something?’
The person in the Radiohead t-shirt had spoken up.
‘Yes, of course, er… Theo, right?’ said Harriet, checking her laptop. Oh, Aoife realised. Theo must be new as well. She’d thought everyone else here had known each other for ages.
‘Speaking as an… actual trans person in the room,’ said Theo, clearing their throat, ‘I wasn’t offended.’
Aoife noticed Harriet’s face drop with the realisation.
Theo went on: ‘As Aoife said… sorry, Aoife, what are your pronouns?’
‘Oh — I’m… she. She, her.’
‘Thanks. Mine are they, them. As Aoife said, she was using she because that’s what the novel does in that part. So I don’t know what we’re really discussing. It seems like… you all just wanted to pile on the newbie.’
The group fell silent. The hiss of the espresso maker floated up from below.
‘Also,’ Theo continued, leaning back with the air of a weary professor, ‘if you really cared about making this a welcoming space for trans people, you would make sure everyone introduced themselves with pronouns at the beginning, which I noticed I was the only one doing. Just a tip. Also, Harriet — I don’t know why you insist on referring to the characters as BAME. They’re black. You can just say black.’
Harriet stared with a glazed smile at Theo. She lifted her cup of tea and took a sip. She cleared her throat. ‘Thank you for that, Theo. I appreciate that. Right, shall we get back to… people’s thoughts on the book?’
***
Shortly after the meeting finished, Aoife muttered a quick goodbye to no one in particular, hoisted her tote bag over her shoulder and scurried downstairs, stopping only to buy a bottle of water — she was fucking parched — from the lone employee starting to close up shop. While she fumbled in her wallet for change — how had she still not gotten used to the pound? She missed Euros — a voice at her side made her flinch: ‘Hey, I’m glad I caught you before — shit, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you!’
She looked at Theo and gave a mad grin. ‘No, sorry, you didn’t, it’s fine!’ She handed the employee a jumble of coins, of which he immediately handed some back. ‘How was, er, how is it usually… I mean, how are you?’
‘I’m good!’ Theo scratched their neck and eyed her with amusement. ‘How are you, though?’
‘Oh — I’m grand, thanks.’ She fumbled to unscrew the bottle and gulped down water. She saw Theo’s light blue bomber jacket and pointed to the door. ‘Are you… ready to go?’
From upstairs came a burst of laughter. The others were still there, chattering as they packed up. She wasn’t sure if Theo might be doing something with them.
But no, they said: ‘Yeah. Are you getting the Tube?’ And when she nodded, ‘I’ll walk with you.’
The streets were a hazy orange, creeping into evening, the rush of commuters from before all gone. Kentish Town felt peaceful, leafy, open, almost provincial. Almost like Castletroy.
‘That was pretty intense,’ said Theo. ‘When they ganged up on you.’
‘Oh, yeah. Thank you for speaking up to… save my honour.’
Theo laughed. ‘Honestly, when you move in certain circles, you notice that some people are more interested in appearing correct than actually being… kind, or understanding. You know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, I think so.’ Aoife nodded. She winced aside as a boy on a bike whizzed close past down the pavement. Her arm brushed Theo’s arm. Neither of them seemed to mind.
‘Have you been going to the book club for long?’ she asked.
‘No. Tonight was my second time. I think it’ll be my last.’
‘I think so for me, too.’
Theo laughed. ‘Good. Wanna start our own two-person club?’
‘We could.’ She smiled, trying to puzzle out if this was a flirtation, and whether she wanted it to be. ‘I have a secret, though. I don’t really like reading books?’
‘Oh, me neither. I usually just wait for the film to come out.’
‘Yeah, it’s much easier, right? It’s better for the eyes. Less strain.’
‘Totally. We should go watch a film together.’
‘What, now?’
‘No, not right now.’ Theo laughed.
‘Sorry.’ And Aoife laughed. At herself. Letting go of a pent-up tension. Something she’d been holding in all evening, all day, maybe since moving to London. And suddenly she was telling them about moving to London, how she’d come to this thing tonight hoping to make friends, how she still found the city overwhelming, even compared to Dublin where she’d done her BA. Theo listened, interested, asking questions about her job — assistant at a music licensing company — and where she was from in Ireland. And all through this, glancing shyly at her new friend, or possibly just companion for the short walk to the Tube, Aoife kept having to remind herself that Theo was they, them, not a girl. But then, what did that mean? If she acknowledged their being non-binary, but she was still, as she felt, attracted to them? Did that mean she was not, as she’d always thought, a lesbian? That she was bi, pan, queer? If they were to start dating? No, fuck, pump the fucking brakes, you idiot, stop thinking so far ahead.
They had stopped at a red light opposite the Tube entrance. As if Theo had read her mind, they said: ‘We can just take it slow.’
She looked over at them. ‘In terms of… ?’
Theo smiled. Shrugged. ‘I’d like to hang out again. You seem like a cool person.’
‘Oh. Er. Thank you.’
‘We could go see the adaptation of The Silken Thread. When that gets made.’
‘No, please. Anything but.’
‘All right.’ Theo chuckled. ‘Something else.’
Aoife smiled to herself.
The light changed to green, and they crossed.
