I painted my fingernails three times in the last two months. Yes, they were chipping, peeling back, my scrubbing fingers rubbing off parts of the tip of the nail paint, destroying what little semblance of “painterliness” the odd job had. It wasn’t entirely caprice that took me when I repainted them. But somehow, I was recovering the nails. Hiding something, wanting to release something.

Tiresias has always been bad at “journaling.” We’re more of a talk-it-out fellow. But this reflection, my face in the polish, is urgent. When I disappear into the dark indigo concealer, do I feel safer? When I buy product after product, applying, wiping away, cleansing, polishing, scrubbing, shampooing, clipping, tending, like a garden gone to weed, like a car being detailed time and time again, there is still aging, yes, there is still pain under the paint, there is still a hiccup in the gas line and less nitrogen in the soil— when I do these things, does Tiresias get free?

Tiresias wants to understand the nature of in-between. Tiresias is impossibly tied to one side by history. Tiresias is pulled to the other by curiosity, by righteous alarm, by moralizing, by scholarly pursuits, by the path of the moon across the eclipsed night. Tiresias cannot be between and be not either or. Tiresias cannot only be both and, both not. So, I paint my fingernails, but not my toenails. I reject manicures. I am homebrew.

I’ve been buying dresses and wearing them as “shirts.” I find them comfortable indoors. I walk outside with the dog, who flares her butch smile in the sunlight while I don tortoiseshell glasses to eclipse the glare of midday headlights. A car passes—not a person, a car—and I turn away as if my backside is not wearing a dress like armor. I realize it is not armor after all. I read that a magical technique for becoming invisible on the street and in a crowd is to make eye contact first and maintain it. Glare at every person you see. The idea is that they look away before you do, and they forget what you look like. Can they forget the man in large shades and a dress with a pit bull?

Tiresias knows armor does not come in the form of a cotton dress but wants so badly to try them on. Tiresias wants to collect all the colors of the rainbow and paint them, one by one, on her nails. Tiresias wants to wear tank tops and spike the ball with her painted hands flashing like disco in the glitter of pre-glass sand; recover the spike, dig the ball, pop it up, letting it fly, asking for help, help, asking desperately for a team member to approve, to price the polish, to check me out, help.