Hi boys. I’m writing you from Tecopa, California: population 100. From where I’m sitting, I can see hundreds of miles of desert. Blonde wetlands stretch out beneath pale purple rolling hills coated in lichen. The harsh arid lands around me are held down by a dense steel fog from the west that brought rain to the Mojave today. The storm that has been threatening all day finally arrived. The electricity cut out just a few minutes ago, but there is still enough light in the sky to keep writing. I’m sitting at a black lacquered desk that looks like it came straight out of the Junior Suite in an old hotel/casino and into the hands of the guy who used to own this property. My friend Adrian owns it now.

Adrian is a trans guy with deep blue eyes and a pickup truck. He scooped me up yesterday from the Las Vegas airport and we made our way through the dusty extraterrestrial rockscape of Western Nevada to the southeastern edge of Death Valley National Park, where the rural census-designated town of Tecopa sits. The town is named after Paiute-Shoshone Chief Tecopa, leader of the Ash Meadows, Pahrump, and Shoshone Tecopa area band of Southern Pauite. Tecopa was known for wearing a bright red suit with a gold braid and a silk top hat. In Pauite, “tecopa” means “wildcat.” He sure does sound like a wild cat. The town has no cell service—a luxury in this day and age. There is a date farm nearby at the bottom of a canyon, sand dunes to the south, a microbrewery in town, and a local haunt just a few minutes with a sign hand-painted in big block letters reading Steak and Beer.

Behind the water-streaked sliding glass door of my room, past the muddy footprints leading down the stairs of the whitewashed deck, beyond the frosted tips of short and stumpy palm trees whooshing back and forth in the fitful winds, the mountains have all but disappeared in a sea of rain. The wind drowns out all other desert sounds. No coyotes yipping. No Christmas music blaring from the speakers of that old man’s RV. No bird sounds. All of us are waiting out the storm together. Tonight, after the rain has passed, I will strip off all my clothes, walk over to the old rusty bathtubs on the edge of the property, and soak my body in the hot springs water that flows endlessly up from the center of the earth to this land.

This is my first official writing residency. And by official, I mean that Adrian invited me to stay here with him on this beautiful land and write. How could I say no? I carved out ten days and jumped on a plane to to this beautiful trans-owned micro retreat in the middle of nowhere to empty my mind and cleanse my soul. Adrian says that this will be a good place for me to write my book. It’s a feminine vortex, he says, foot on the gas as we thump and swerve going 75 on the only road in and out of town. The waters here heal people. You know what, I believe it. Last night in the hot springs, under the gauzy glow of the Leo moon, I felt something crack open in me.

I haven’t told you this yet, but a lot of this book is about my emotionally abusive ex-girlfriend. This isn’t something that I’ve told a lot of people. I haven’t vented about it online. None of our mutual friends know my side of the story. She probably doesn’t even know, although how could she not? But something crazy happened just a few weeks ago. I was writing about that time in my life—transporting myself back to those tender, swollen years of early transition when the world feels like it will break if someone doesn’t see you for who you are—when I got a message from some girl (we’ll call her UKGirlie) I had never met.

UKG told me that she was worried for her ex-boyfriend. She hadn’t talked to him in a while and had become genuinely frightened for his safety. They opened up their relationship seven months ago when some new girl moved down to the seaside town they lived in, got her claws in him, and slowly began to corrode any intimacy and love between UKG and this boy until there was nothing left. UKG says that she knows that I know her. And boy, do I know her.

The timing of this message was beyond auspicious. I didn’t fully realize it, but a part of me was still (stupidly, idiotically, wishfully) holding out hope that this girl who upended my life had…I don’t know, changed? Grown? Worked on herself? Despite having fully committed to writing this book and unearthing my reality bit by bit from the chokehold she had on those five years of my life, a part of me was still protecting her, still caught up in her psychic hold.

I don’t know why I was so concerned about how she would feel reading these words, how she would feel about other people reading these words. All of this time while I’ve been doing the emotional runaround about how she might feel about me telling my truth about what happened between us, she’s been doing the same thing to other trans boys. Worse, she is escalating. You would think receiving these messages would be upsetting to me on some level, triggering maybe. I can’t tell you how much permission they gave me.

So I’m out here in the desert saying the things that need to be said. Cis women do not get a free pass from committing acts of violence simply because they are women. Trans men are not responsible for the sins of the patriarchy. Trans guys should not shoulder the burden of every cis man who walked before us. Being femme or kinky or poly or a sex worker doesn’t make you any less likely to commit acts of violence. Victimizing yourself for sport and weaponizing masculinity against any trans guy who wants to be your equal isn’t feminism. I know so many trans mascs who are stuck in cycles of projected violence, invisibility, emotional manipulation, and self-deprecation, and a desire to be good. I’m done trying not to say the quiet part out loud. I am not afraid anymore.

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So here I am in the feminine vortex of the Mojave writing what scares me the most. The room I am writing to you from is simple: a bed, that black and gold casino desk, a jug of water, a mini-fridge, a Coleman stove, and a glass door to watch the desert through. The rains have stopped now. The gravel is wet. The power is back on. Tomorrow, the sun will solidify the quicksand outside my deck into something that can withstand the weight of my boot. I’m writing this to you to let you know what I’m up against, where I’m going, and where I’ll be as I take the next nine days off.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day. Wherever you are, I want you to use this day as a portal. A warp-speed time machine. Go back to a moment in your life when you were so happy, when you trusted yourself, when you knew your gifts. Recommit to yourself and the promises you made back then. Find that moment and draw an energetic line around it. Today I want you to take yourself on a writing retreat, even if it’s in your own living room. Call it a desert. Get in the bath. Call it a hot spring. Get back in touch with yourself. Get free.

By the way, I’m offering 20% off annual paid subscriptions from now until the end of February in case you missed it. Join if you can. Thank you all for reading, ily.