Upon release from the Army, Vernon was assigned to work as a custodian. The quiet ex-sniper with ivory skin and translucent, mint green eyes kept writing to Matias, the decorated solider with whom he had a love affair. Matias never replied.

Vernon mopped the floor of a bar on downtown’s outer edge where a raucous band played twice a week. He cleaned and wiped counters after liquor spilled from broken bottles and shattered  glass. Wearing a faded gray uniform, he cleaned after patrons fought, bled and collapsed, motivating himself by imagining Matias walking in. After a few weeks, a gathering of gay men noticed Vernon. Clearing empty cans one night, he heard a voice. “You there, hunny,” one of the men called as he collected trash, “come over here.” Vernon looked up without expression. The men motioned him to the end of the bar. Bartenders poured drinks. The bar’s patrons talked, drank and howled. Vernon stiffened up, tucked a cloth into a belt loop and went over.

“I’m not allowed to serve drinks,” he said. “Sweety,” one of them said, “that’s not why we called you over.” The man reached up, framing Vernon’s face with both hands, as if showcasing a painting. His bar mates nodded. “God,” one of them said. “He is beautiful.”

“What’s he doing cleaning this dump?” another asked, sloshing words together. The one whose hands still framed Vernon’s face whispered, “hun, you could be on stage.” The man looked to a small riser across from the other end of the bar.

A short time later, the men left. They returned every Tuesday—always more solicitous of Vernon than other patrons—clustering at the bar’s corner. The one who framed his face smiled and often winked. This went on for months. One night before closing time, they came around Vernon, who stepped back with a mop in his hand.

Guiding Vernon toward a custodial closet, they started to fuss over Vernon, playing with his hair, yet with intent. Vernon let them. Weeks later, they gathered at closing and did it again. This time, they adorned Vernon in clear sight of the boss, who gave a nod. From then on, the men fussed over Vernon, fitting him with women’s shoes and clothes, applying plastics and cosmetics. The leader said something to Vernon, whom they brought out and propped up onto the riser, still grainy with sawdust from the previous night’s band performance. Vernon started to sing.

The place went silent. Someone took a picture. Posters were printed and pasted around the neighborhood. Two weeks later, Vernon debuted while dressed as a woman and the place was packed. In show after show, Vernon sang. Patrons filled a jar with coins and bills. Vernon started earning enough money to rent a room with a private toilet. For a while, he felt better.

Vernon always looked for Matias. One day, while standing in line waiting for a ration, Vernon felt a tap on his shoulder. “Spencer?” The voice was deep and familiar. “Is that you, Vernon Spencer.” It came from behind. Vernon turned to see an infantryman. “Company leader!” Vernon giggled. “Not now,” the man said with a chuckle. “Jus’ plain Luther.” They chatted, avoiding the obvious until Vernon asked: “What gave me away?” Luther smiled and answered: “That face,” pausing, reeling back and, smiling broadly, adding: “You somethin’.”

They spoke about combat and traded post-war stories. How Vernon came to sing and put on a show. Why Luther moved north after the last war. How food, water and medicine got rare and expensive. When Vernon asked about Matias, Luther shook his head long and slow, resting his arm on Vernon’s shoulder. “Sorry ‘bout all that.” Vernon said he didn’t know what Luther meant.

Luther kept on. “I heard he trained in the desert.” Luther stopped, looking past the long, coiling line of forlorn faces and his voice softened. “Like ev’erbody, I s’pose he aimed to get lost. Word is Matias Kaypeck disappeared.” Luther added: “Someone say Neville Steen said he saw Kaypeck wearin’ stripes. Cain’t say fo’ sure. I figure goin’ away sounds ’bout right.”

The line moved as he spoke. Hours later, Vernon and Luther were laughing about jammed pins, stale bread and cleaning duty. “You looking fine,” Luther told his comrade as they came to the end of the line. “Be yoself,” Luther advised. “Find somebody who ‘kin love yeh back.”

Vernon kept singing as a female impersonator. He put on a show. The band of gay men brought other men. Soon, everyone—in couples, groups and singles—came to see Vernon perform. Occasionally, army mates learned about Vernon and came to see him perform. Vernon bought them drinks and asked about Matias.

A year went by. The show’s audience grew. Vernon added songs, hired a vocal coach and never stopped wanting Matias. Vernon did learn to calm himself after each performance. This made him more motivated to find Matias. Vernon was haunted by his love and the wanting to know.

The anguish had a curious effect; Vernon’s emotional state bestowed authenticity on the show. Every night, as the lights came up, Vernon—advertised as Veronica—stepped to a microphone stand and started to sing. The lessons gave his tenor softness in the sorrow. The improved singing changed audience facial expressions, undoubtedly affected by alcohol. This, in turn, intensified Vernon’s emotions, sometimes bringing him to tears. The makeup ran, which moved the audience, mirroring and compounding Vernon’s inner sadness.

Audiences came to the show to cope with the bleak and dreary culture. The show’s simple title, “Veronica Sings,” punctuated Vernon’s hurting. One night, looking into a scratchy mirror in the custodial closet before a performance, Vernon concluded that Matias abandoned him because Matias wanted to be with a woman. Vernon sat looking in the mirror. He decided that Matias might want him if he could be like a woman. Vernon switched the lights off and sat for a while in the dark. Finally, he rose, dressed as Veronica, stepping out before planting one of the high heels into the sawdust to put on “Veronica Sings.”

Vernon’s hand gestures—his pause before a refrain, holding on certain notes—everything changed after that night. Songs echoed in alleys and streets like a longing howl of aching, grief and pain. Having vowed within to become like a woman, Vernon initiated his new stake in the bureaucracy. By the following season, Vernon was approved for the necessary procedures.

Within months, Vernon finished steps to become like a woman. Bruised, drugged and exhausted, he felt sore and hollow inside. When he gazed into the mirror before showtime, he was less motivated to apply cosmetics. He saw creases, wrinkles and lines. He could barely summon a reason to cover them up. He looked like a freak, he decided. Matias was probably lost. Audiences came to hear Vernon sing sad songs, not for his beauty, which had faded, or even for the novelty. Audiences walked in feeling low. People left feeling high—if not for long—as a reflection of and reprieve from their own deepest suffering, grief and pain.

Reasoning that he could not find and keep the one he loved—and that he’d reduced himself to survival by pretending to be a woman—Vernon finally sought a permanent escape. One night, after listening for the cue from his sound engineer—a knotty-haired tomboy who went by D’Antoine—Vernon realized that he’d chosen to live in a way which was half-true and not really practicable. Making an effort to compose himself, Vernon thought: I want out.

He had heard a rumor that Matias was living in a nearby city. One of his comrades had told him that an officer said that an officer named Kaypeck had recently married a woman. Vernon had gifted the drug-addled comrade with scrips, so he might’ve made the story up to get a fix. But the ex-soldier had added that Matias was unhappy being married to the woman and that Matias had become a father who lived in the ghetto. Another rumor had it that Matias had married and still loved Vernon. Vernon knew only that he wanted Matias.

Vernon had never stopped wanting him. As D’Antoine shut power down one night after closing, as liquor stocks were being locked, Vernon—knowing that surgeries did not make him feel like a woman, knowing that he was not a woman, knowing that he could never be as beautiful as he one had been—as he’d been when Matias had known him—that he was like a freak who couldn’t be himself—and that his hold on life was slipping, closed the custodian closet door and exited into an entry chamber, bidding goodnight to the security guard and bracing for a journey he knew he would make. Vernon finished packing, ready to make a last attempt to find and pledge his romantic love, pleading to belong to Matias—or bring an end to his life.

Vernon paid his debts. He assigned his army fund death beneficiary to his show’s sound engineer—D’Antoine had been loyal and competent in staging “Veronica Sings”—and he bought a government bus pass and requisite transfers to the nearby city where it was rumored Matias lived. He knew he couldn’t trust the rumors. He knew he had to go along with them.

He’d said goodbye to the gathering of gay men. After applying makeup, fitting his finest wig and letting himself admit that he looked a bit better, Vernon stepped into a red dress. He walked a few blocks to the bus stop.

As Veronica, Vernon looked into the bus stop’s metal reflection. His face was drawn. Vernon’s eyes, he noticed and knew, were sad. He had packed a valise with silk underthings. He’d hooked a purse on his wrist. He’d packed a revolver into a hat box. He donned a wide-brimmed hat.

When the bus arrived, Veronica boarded and walked to the back, taking a seat by a window. After a few transfers, Veronica rode into the city where he’d heard Matias lived. As the bus was granted access to proceed beyond a thick concrete and steel wall flanked by two rows of tanks, his heart raced and his stomach stirred, straining his stitches and scars. The bus passed near an old sky tower which Veronica supposed had been built back when beauty was admired. The bus turned onto a wide, militarized row near an officers’ compound—Veronica knew this was where Matias had been rumored to be posted—and, as the bus passed the place where officers were housed, Veronica fixed a stare. He thought he spotted Matias.

At first, his breath stopped. He couldn’t be sure it was Matias. He stared in shock because Matias looked different, though the build, the stance and the swagger suggested this was Matias. Veronica pulled the cord. The brakes squeaked and the bus jerked to a halt. Clutching his purse, gripping the valise and the hat box loop, Veronica stepped off the bus and stood for a moment. As the bus pulled away, Veronica felt a gust of wind, which swept up and lifted the brim of his hat, which he tried to hold down. The wind grabbed the hat away. With it went the wig. Veronica’s eyes found Matias across the street.

Matias stood near the military housing and Veronica could see now that he was speaking with a woman—Veronica could not have known that this was his commanding officer—and Veronica was convinced that the woman was Matias’s wife.

A small crowd gathered in the street as people stopped and stared at the person in matted hair and a red dress, carrying a valise, purse and hat case. Matias and the woman turned to notice the commotion. Matias looked in Veronica’s general direction, though Matias looked past Veronica and turned to look at the woman again. In that instant, Veronica sank. Figuring that Matias had forgotten him—or that he was invisible to the man he loved—his eyes went blank.

Worse, Veronica thought, Matias did recognize him and chose to ignore him— this thought was unbearable. Veronica froze. For the first time in his life, he did not know what to do. Agonizing between two thoughts—that Matias saw and failed to recognize him or that Matias did recognize him and did not want him to know it—Vernon as Veronica felt invisible, unwanted and unworthy of love. Veronica no longer wanted to have a reason to live.

Matias saluted the woman just as Veronica’s eyes closed and Matias entered a military vehicle, which pulled away. Veronica stood alone. A woman with a child in hand stared at Veronica without the wig. Drivers and passers by stared. Some pointed. Some laughed. A bell-shaped woman stared and cackled. Veronica felt humiliated. He did not look away. He did not cry. With his valise, purse and hat box, he turned and walked in the direction of the sky tower.

Bewildered, Veronica entered the lobby of what had once been known and admired as a skyscraper. The marble entrance had evidently been intended to welcome those with business to conduct, trades to make and matters to resolve. Staggering toward the back wall, behind which two opposing doorways lead to stairwells on both sides of an elevator bank, Veronica had never seen such an empty and opulent lobby. Desperate to spare himself the indignity of lost love, he stepped on an elevator and pressed the top button. Gilded doors closed. Veronica felt himself being pulled upward.

As the doors opened, he heard a soft, tinkling chime. When he stepped off the car, he saw a crystal staircase edged with gold. Veronica ascended the spiral staircase in his red dress.

When Veronica came to the top floor, he found himself facing gold-plated double doors. He thought he heard a sound, though he knew he was high above the metropolis and that it might’ve been the sound of wind. Unaware that tears were streaming down his face, which was smeared with mascara, eye shadow and eyeliner, he couldn’t be sure he was in possession of his senses. Either someone was behind these golden doors, he thought, or he was mad with confusion. Veronica pushed the doors open and was immersed in a majestic view. The city sprawled—framed by solid, gold-plated glass—as an empty railroad track stretched out toward the horizon. This was an abandoned penthouse. It was or had been inhabited. He noticed that it was furnished.

Veronica looked into the middle of an elegant room. The dazed, beautiful ex-solider turned as the hat case loop glided down his wrist. Awed by the city around him, he let the the purse fall onto an embroidered silk loveseat. He felt strangely at peace.

It was as if the world belonged in this higher space—as if, here, Veronica belonged in the world. In this, his lowest, darkest moment, as if the sky unfurled a message—something serious, something crucial—to Veronica which was like a hymn at the death of his truest love. The valise fell. He felt himself letting go.

Moving toward the edge of the tower—close enough to press his face to the window’s glass—his mind flush with emotion which was at once painful and purifying, his breathing slowed. He moved closer to the edge. Veronica did not know that someone was watching; that someone had seen everything from the moment Veronica had burst into the penthouse to now, as he stood ready to thrust himself into the sky—or be saved for the sake of his own life.

Like a vow to himself—on the brink of madness or salvation—he began to say aloud: “I want nothing but the best for you…” He spoke the words as if singing a melody to prepare an end to life or to bury his past with knowledge and acceptance of reality. In this moment, Veronica achieved clarity he had never known. It is not that everything made sense. Everything was clearer than it had been before. Vernon suddenly realized and knew that he could learn to live and die with his self-inflicted wounds, true love and new wisdom on his mind. This is when a new man stepped out for the first time.

– Scott Holleran

Author’s Note: Following my encounter with one of the world’s first transsexuals—an Army veteran—in San Francisco, I wanted to write a story about a soldier seeking peace, recovery, and egoism. A song by Adele, “Someone Like You,” inspires this slightly dystopian tale of the self-made soldier.