I.

The Men will allow me to remain through the Harvest. They need more manpower, and although I am not a man, they can’t quite place me. I am close enough, and as the Harvest approaches, they are desperate. I have a body. I follow directions. They think I might be useful for catching the chickens in the evenings. If I behave, I may be permitted to leave the farm on my own terms. I hope only to endure this place long enough to find Caleb. To get him out before he takes root.

I had been staking out the perimeter of the farm for two weeks trying to gain information. I saw the farm advertised on the news, of all places, although it was generally known to exist. A man with a septum piercing and a muscular neck spoke to an interviewer through long eyelashes. Seeking seasonal labor. Be the better man. Alluring long-term opportunities. When you have no place else to go. He was coy, but he said enough. I understood that Caleb, my Caleb, had fled our complicated, queer love with his heart tied into knots. That he had thought to himself, I have no place else to go. I will Man-Up. That he may have wondered, dreamed even, of what might happen if he allowed the gentle flower of himself to be crushed in this man’s outstretched palm. They say that after you complete a Harvest, you have a choice about whether or not to stay on permanently. But when Caleb left, he was desperate to belong. And as Muscle Neck pointed out, the farm has a 98% retention rate of seasonal labor. Happy Workers, Happy Men.

It was in my moonlit attempt to scale the fence that I was apprehended. Caleb has always been a stargazer, so I had hoped to catch sight of him by night. But the Men know better than to let people come and go as they please. Their public image is air tight. Snooping prohibited. They had hold of me as soon as my feet touched the soil.

II.

On my first date with Caleb, we went two-stepping in an old church that had been converted into a dive bar. I had just shaved half my head and felt edgy and monstrous. I had black cowboy boots. A black knit dress, short across my curves. It was the first time I played with pronouns, confided the theyness of myself to this then-stranger. With half of my profile exposed, I was a piece of pared-down driftwood. Caleb, on the other hand, was all rhinestones. A foot taller than me, rail-thin, he was an oak-tree adorned with Mardi Gras beads. Each time he stepped on my toes, he let out a high-pitched squeal and wiggled around in his bedazzled tank top. His palms were sweating. I love this song, he giggled over and over, lilting along with the Dwight Yoakam cover. We shrugged off the raised eyebrows of the older folks as I led and he followed.

Caleb was there when I traded my push-up bras for oversized men’s shirts and chest binders. We talked about pronouns and polyamory and politics throughout river-bank nights, letting the cicadas drown out our unanswerable questions. He had also given up on language in that same Southern way, half promise, half defeat. He, she, they, I, y’all. Gender is a cactus! we shouted at the expansive sky. We dug our fingers into the red mud and listened for whispers of ourselves in the whoooosh of high, dusty winds.

At an antique store in West Texas, I bought him his first real piece of jewelry: a moonstone ring set in a braid of silver. He kept it on always, even when his fingers were deep inside me. In the sun, Caleb looked like a daisy reaching upward. In spite of our difference in height, we shared a wardrobe of billowy skirts and skinny jeans. In his arms, I felt earth-bound, like a composting leaf. I could be anything and change my mind any time. Organic, constant transition.

And I let him go.

III.

While the Men determine my assignment, I creep through an orchard. The rules here are not what I expected. I am free to wander, as if they know I will not try to leave. They are counting on my desperation to belong, my entitlement to space, my assumption that this environment will serve me. The danger, I realize, stems from the land itself. The effects of place.

Everything smells like earth and dew. Sunlight reaches the path in selective dapples. Thick veiny leaves burst from limbs as delicate as ladyfingers, drooping with the weight of gray, spongy fruit. Hanging from one of the outermost trees, a sign: Self-Loathing. I pluck a blob from its weary limb and feel it crumble between my fingers. The dust it produces rises in a noxious cloud that leaves me sputtering. Only after this encounter do I notice the caution sign spiked into the ground: PPE recommended. Walking a few paces with my eyes closed, I nearly trip on a chicken that is munching the discarded fruit from the ground. Squid I call her, for her inky black feathers.

By the time I have advanced beyond the orchard, it is fully morning. I come upon row after row of hedges that greet the lilac sun with a hesitant softness. Poised in the center of each cluster of leaves is a tangle of wooly violet spheres. They smell sweet and I find myself taken in by them. So palatable, so alluring. With their scent slipping in and out of range, my vision clouds. It will be okay. It will all be okay. Just don’t think about it. Laugh it off, the spheres coax me. I pull my t-shirt up over my nose and mouth and look around for a sign. It is painted in black script with blue polka dots: Avoidance. Fertilize regularly. I pass Oedipal Complexes, Control Issues, and Performance Anxiety. Unexamined Need and Competition ooze maroon and lime-green sap, respectively. I do not dare let these fluids touch my skin. Bicuriosity comes up in raised beds but appears plagued by white flies and mealybugs. This strikes me as a pity.

I find myself wondering in disgust about the profit margins of such a place. Its funders. A federal grant, I imagine. A non-profit. Or a big donation from some kind of alt-institute. The pet project of a local billionaire, one with an environmental ethos. I roll my eyes, frustration intercepting my cautious footsteps. I stomp on the dried husk of a fruit, and realize too late what I’ve done: my mind is instantly seized. I believe the Men’s myths and want only to Seek Approval. Perhaps the Men need a grant writer. If I help, maybe they will love me. I start to wonder about canning, pickling, the tiny doilies displayed on their tables at the market stands, how to package and advertise things, what I can do to join the fold. I feel this operation could benefit from a zine that allows the consumer to see, in sketched and photocopied DIY illustrations, how the farm functions. I will make this suggestion when I meet with those in charge, in the hopes that I can secure my place here long enough…It takes a full minute of deep breathing to repossess myself. I whisper my cause aloud, my voice shaking, trying to hold on to it: to save Caleb. But what if my mind is too weak, my resolve too slim? I am not a man, but I am not invulnerable. I feel the pull, the pressure. Masculinity sowed by the masculine. They are growing it from the ground.

The sun is high by the time I wander upon the trellises. My forearms begin to sting and blush. The binder on my chest chafes and shortens my breath. If Caleb had never left, he would have treated the rash tenderly. Reminded me to breathe. Offered to help me schedule the top surgery. These thoughts are so distracting and the heat so intense that I nearly walk straight into an enormous trellis. Ultimatum, says the sign at the foot of the towering vine. Like the ultimatum I gave Caleb, once he’d begun to slip away, once his grief and insecurity became root-rotted by jealousy. What I wanted: for him to love himself as much as I loved him, as much as he claimed to love me.

The Ultimatum plant’s flowers resemble honeysuckle, but the vine itself is thick and corded, like rope. I picture it tightening around my throat, and my breath becomes quick, then choked. The last thing I see before I lose consciousness is little Squid, my blurred vision assigning her three heads. I fall to the ground, heat-exhausted, amidst a chorus of clucking.

IV.

When I wake up, I am in a hut that appears to be made of adobe. Everything is burnt-orange. Taking stock of my body, I feel the chest binder digging into the rash on my ribcage. Do they know that I am Other? Surely. Do they care? It is not yet clear to me how gender works in a place like this. Whether or not a masculinity farm polices the binary or simply assumes it. It is not clear to me which would be worse. Is my existence inconceivable here? And what about Caleb’s? But upon further thought, I do not believe I am in a conversion camp, not exactly. This operation feels more sophisticated. They are reaping masculinity, and serving it as a balm for the perils of our Southern existence. A commodity for anyone to consume who wants to buy in.

Supply and demand. If I could only speak to Caleb about this place. The missing him makes my heart clench, my mouth go dry. Next to my bed, I notice a pitcher of fresh juice as well as an ice pack, still cold. I raise it to my cheek and the heat lifts from my face, melts from my eyelids. I down the juice quickly and am restored.

I can still taste the juice on my lips when something inside me slips: my cheeks burn with Shame. A man has taken care of me, I realize. How can I possibly repay him? Perhaps with oral sex followed by swallowing. Perhaps emotional labor. Maybe I should put on a dress, some makeup. Maybe he just needs a mother. A sister. A daughter. I snap out of this descent only when I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the mirror. I remove my shirt, and the rash glows, lit by the late afternoon sun through the window.

V.

By evening, I have discovered a wardrobe of clean t-shirts, flannels, and jeans. I tousle my hair, flatten my cowlick, select the largest shirt. I dress like a Man. When I am about ready to go in search of dinner, someone appears at my door. He has shoulder-length blonde curls and boardshorts, his perfect abs exposed. His smile is bright white, like sunlight hitting water. He is exceedingly handsome and most likely enjoys when women wear sundresses. Faded memories of shopping malls and Abercrombie models course through my brain. I thank this man for the icepack while examining my Converse. No problemo. Wasn’t me though. That was my buddy Caleb, he says. I can’t help but look up at this boardshort god. Caleb? I ask. A good man, the surferbro coos.

Person, I think to myself. Caleb is a good person. I shudder: he knows I am here. I want to run out screaming his name, but the surferbro offers me a tour before dinner with a look that implies it is not optional. I follow him out past the line of mudhuts and into the fields.

Surferbro tells me I will have two responsibilities on the farm. The first is to chase down the chickens each night and wrestle them back into their coop, which is made of latticed wire and shaped like a castle. (Those little fuckers can really put up a fight!) For my daytime task, he prefaces, How are you at plant identification? You know, sorting, labeling. I just nod. He guides me to a field of sprouting plants behind the chicken coop the size of a tennis court. In the dimming light, it is hard to make out their individual shapes.

The Board does have a question for you, surferbro says from a shadow. Why were you trying to climb the fence when you could have signed up for Seasonal Labor at the front gate? We’ve had people trying to climb out before, but never in. His chuckle takes on an eerie rattle.

Fuck, I think to myself. Something not unlike the truth spills out of me. I…wanted to see what it was like here. Who was here, what happened to them. Before I joined.

Surferbro’s smile is the only part of his face visible in this light. Fear of commitment! We can work with that. He laughs again. This place, he says, now more serious, is for anyone who needs it.

VI.

At dinner, I scan the room for Caleb. He is tall and should be easy to spot, but most of the people are seated. I am in the main chamber of an impressive piece of neoclassical architecture. The space resembles a turn-of-the-century bank. The inside of the chamber has been transformed into a rec room that is the picture of elegance. Large-screen televisions complement mid-century leather. There are tables for pool, ping pong, poker, and a fully tended bar. A large shelf in the corner is devoted to hot sauce, some of which claims to be made on-site. Local ghost peppers. Everywhere I look, tables overflow with decadent piles of grilled meat and vegetables and hungry men. Surferbro tells me to take a seat and help myself. Farm to table! And fresh corn tortillas. Nixtamalized!

Try the chicken, someone says to me. We raise them ourselves. I know this voice, this face, from years ago. I recognize Eden slowly, the details of our past relationship fanning out across my body. We fucked somewhat regularly, a decade ago. One of the first people I knew who asked to be called they, which I admired, and which didn’t prevent them from treating me like shit. But Eden doesn’t seem to recognize me. I refuse the chicken but grab a tortilla. Authentic.

It occurs to me that perhaps no one who lives here throughout an entire Harvest season recognizes anyone from their past. Another one of the techniques that make this farm so successful. Has Caleb been here long enough to forget me?

Eden is talking about the Harvest, sinking their gap teeth deeper and deeper into bird flesh until they reach bone. Apparently, the farm will be harvesting for at least another week, when most of the fruits will be ready. Then everything will be complete. They talk about gardening and how great it is to have stayed on after their first Harvest, to finally have found a community. I’m trying to sort my head out, to come back to myself and understand how any person could choose this place, when I spot the willowy figure of Caleb, his brown hair plaited into a braid. He is wearing the same beige overalls he had on when I last saw him one month ago. I stop breathing. I pursue him across the marble chamber, trying not to draw attention to my haste. He passes through an unmarked door, but when I reach the door, it is locked. I want to pound on it, to kick it down, but something in my gut tells me to wait.

VII.

After his mother died, the wet and supple thing between me and Caleb began to dry out. When it finally cracked, I could only see him through a dusty haze.

He blamed my flirtation with the woman next door. The way she would rub her thumb across the soft part of my wrist when I said something charming or vulnerable, or invite me on walks with her puppy. It made his spine crawl, a spine that was already reeling from loss. His mother had left him, he said, and now I would too. His fear had roots too deep for me to pull out with words, and it consumed him, obsessed with becoming a person his mother could have loved completely. The logic of grief, more frightening for going unspoken. With my heart so intertwined with his, my own grasp on identity so fresh and delicate, it was hard for me to sort through his unhappiness. His mother was dead, but had she lived, wouldn’t he have become dead to her?

Hadn’t she been trying to uproot the sunflower of him for as long as he’d been old enough to challenge her god, her normal? Hadn’t she dug her own grave in a bed of hate? I was inexperienced with grief, did not know how to parse the literal passing from the tiny deaths of rejection. I lost him in the weeds.

His skin took on a gray tint beneath the rhinestones, which he eventually traded out for boyish gym clothes that hung off his slender frame like flags of surrender. He stopped doing his dishes, and in order to avoid the mess at his apartment, wanted to stay every night at mine. He slept badly. He had nightmares. I loved him, always. But it is hard to press your body into someone you stop recognizing.

I moved first to my couch, and when the abyss felt too great, I left for my parents’ house on the bayou, trying to convince myself that with some distance I would be able to think more clearly. Instead, I returned to find him stoned out of his mind, playing a computer game in my unmade bed. Oh, you’re back? he asked, his bloodshot eyes unfocused. Then, as if reciting the rant that must have been playing on repeat in his mind during my absence, you’re back for her? Because it’s easier? Hopping ship? Because I’ll just drag you down. I drag people down, sure. But you—you want too much. He fell back on the gendered language we had both sworn off, excavating it in lonely chat rooms late at night. Slut. Cunt. Crazy. I wondered if, on some level, he was talking to his mother. Or to his own feminine self that she had so denied. But his venom coursed through me nonetheless.

One day we tried to go dancing. We returned to the little church-turned-dive-bar, and as always, I took his waist, held his hand. We glided across the floor. For a moment, the pokiness of his hip bone and the softness of his palm cut through the stale months that had knocked our love out of sync. I thought, here we are. Here, and now. I thought, he is as light as air. This could once again become easy. I’ll carry him. Until a couple of men with cropped haircuts took seats at the bar, watching us. At the end of a song, one of them drawled, what kind of a man makes a woman work so hard? If you won’t spin her, I sure as hell will. Bet you don’t hold the door for your mamma neither. He approached us and reached for my hand. I drew it back and looked at Caleb for some sign we might laugh in this man’s face, beat back his assumptions with our joy. But Caleb wilted. He made for the door. Wouldn’t it be easier, he asked, to try to be normal?

Then one day he said, staring at the space above my eyebrow, that he had an idea of how to make things better for me. He said he was going out and not to follow him. He was wearing my tan overalls. They hit just above his slender ankles. And I was proud enough, and also wounded enough, that I let him go. I let him walk away carrying all the blame for his depression and my fatigue. It didn’t take long before I realized, staring into the gnarled branch of our favorite oak, what I had done. Of course he cared. He cared so much, was so afraid of failing me, that he cut us off at the roots. If I can save us both from this place, we might still regrow.

VIII.

At dawn, the surferbro reappears at my door. I have gathered that his name is Rick, because last night I could hear several of the men chanting rickrickrickrickrick. Out the window of my mudhut, I saw his sculpted body held tenderly in a kegstand. His peers righted him with the grace of schoolgirls playing light-as-a-feather-stiff-as-a-board, before throwing themselves in a pile atop his gleaming body. What ensued was something between an orgy and a fistfight.

Rick has still not changed out of his boardshorts. He smells like freshly lit weed, and his blonde curls float in the hill country breeze like waves lapping a shoreline. His lip is swollen, his neck covered in hickies. Apparently Bicuriosity prevails. He hands me a large three-ring binder that says in familiar script across the front: A Field Guide to Garden Delight. A smaller book entitled Masculinity in the Field falls from the binder. You’ll probably wanna cross-reference, Rick says, before heading back to his hut.

Seated next to the first row in the experimental garden, I flip open my new reading material. The plant closest to me is thorny, and its leaves have a fuzzy bluish hue. I search by color under “blue” in Masculinity in the Field and quickly recognize the leaves in the photo as those sprouting from the earth: Muted Orgasm. There is nothing in the book on stalks or textures, so I move to the binder. It is full of photos developed from a film camera and includes dainty labels made from scrapbooking supplies. I flip to “thorns” and skim past Gaslighting and Breadwinner’s Rights until I find an image of a thorn with subtle yellow tips. I paint a small wooden sign: Muted Orgasm X Vampiric Touch with the cartoonish outline of a bat, just for fun.

Throwing myself into the next challenge, I find my way to the back of the binder in the section on flowering weeds. I excel at identifying the Circlejerk hybrids with their blends of actions and emotions. But my heart skips when I recognize Caleb’s handwriting beneath a feeble stalk that resembles a used-up dandelion. Dissolution of Self. The same handwriting that he uses to write grocery lists and song lyrics. My tongue is dry and the inside of my mouth hurts.

IX.

By day four, I am exhausted. My arms are scratched from repeated encounters with the chicken I call Squid. Her tentacle-like claws squeeze my wrist when I hold her. I wonder what kinds of horrors Squid has absorbed from the Men and their rituals. Whether or not she, like some of the others, has been grazing on the fruits of masculinity. Perhaps she is immune to the poisons of this place, but I doubt it. She paces anxiously. I long to soothe her and will likely subject myself to more scratches in the attempt. It has been two days since I identified Caleb’s script, and Squid’s scratches feel good on my body, like something I deserve. I let him go, I confide to my therapy chicken. It is my fault we are both here.

X.

Mid-morning, on the last day of the Harvest, Rick comes to find me. He is sweaty and gorgeous, and I try not to look at him. We’re going on a trip, he hoots. Time to celebrate!

I follow him past the empty chicken castle, through the now-familiar fields and groves. Land that had been lined with laboring men is now empty, farm equipment tucked away. I lag behind Rick and take in the vastness of the terrain, wondering about the soil’s complicity in all this propagation. Is it too taken hostage, appropriated by the power of this place?

Rick and I walk for a long time until we reach the farthest corner of the property, an edge I have not yet seen. The air still holds the slight dewy chill of morning, which apparently is enough to justify the group of men creating a bonfire with massive blow torches. I recognize a few of the dried-out tree trunks they plan to burn and dread the effect of their smoke: Conquest, Virility, Belonging. I hold my breath in anticipation. Several men sit around the blowtorch party and strum guitars at competing volumes. I see Eden passing out little scoops of fresh mushrooms from a purple basket. They skip around and deposit the mushrooms into outstretched hands.

The mushrooms are clammy in my palm. They are fuchsia-colored and bleed a little. They smell like something pulled out of the bay at low tide. Around the fire, a circle begins to form. The man with the largest blowtorch wears cowboy boots, a brass belt buckle, and dark sunglasses. He is shorter than I am but has a light brown mustache with waxed tips that takes up half his face.

He begins a speech about the rights of Men and hardships overcome. The myth of patriarchy. Excluded, overlooked. We are denied sex, compensation. Emasculated. What they won’t give, we will take. He thrusts his hips. Adjusts his crotch. He is talking about rape, I presume, but more than that. About a mindset. He is a fraternity, he is the internet, he is the president. I am aware that I have until the end of this speech before I will be expected to eat the bleeding fungus. We are going on a trip, he shouts, to a chorus of cheers. A vice closes around my lungs. Time elapses, and the sinister cowboy stares at me. I am afraid of this man and his blow torch, and of the other men wearing long robes whose eyes scan the crowd like state troopers at a protest. But what if they’re right? What if I could find my place here? What if instead of facing the cactus of each queer day, I woke up certain?

I place half the mushrooms in my mouth and chew, trying to remember the queer horizon Caleb and I had vowed to keep chasing. Just before the final bonfire brush is lit, I hear a soft chirp and turn. Squid is at my side. She has a note tied to her leathery little foot, a note that can only be from Caleb. We can make it out. DON’T SWALLOW. Under the fence. In script so hastily written that it is barely legible: I’m so sorry.

But the Men’s eyes are on me and I panic as the snake of fire shoots into the blue sky. I fear spitting anything out and having the note discovered, Squid’s collaboration and Caleb’s escape exposed. I swallow the note along with part of the earthy fungus. Vomit fuchsia and regret.

XII.

I have been planted. I am a seed in the earth. A rare hybrid. No one knows how to name me.

The soil asks me questions, but I do not understand them. Its words are garbled in my head, the sound of a million inchworms moving through dirt.

One day I will grow into something recognizable. For now I am a speck. The soil embraces me and it is warm, wet. I will spend months underground until it is time to be harvested. It is dark here with little sunbursts of rust-colored light.

When I have sprouted, the planters come for me. They take my leaves above-ground as a map and locate my place in the earth. The clank of metal startles me. They will drag me beneath a till, or perhaps hack at me with a hoe. They will sever me from my roots and darken each sunburst. I am frozen in anticipation until I hear a sound echoing in my consciousness. It is Caleb’s voice saying my name. Dig deeper, he whispers. You’ll find me. At the fence, at the horizon.

I’m sorry too, I say. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

His reply gives me strength. None of this was your fault. Don’t give up. Keep wanting.

With all my might, I push my body down through the earth, climbing, chewing soil. My chest aches from the pressure, but it is growing lighter here. It is all sunbursts. I realize my eyes have been closed and pry them open. When I do, I am lying on the ground against a log, the far end of which is burning.

The Men move in slow motion. They are dancers, leaping to and fro. Some hold hands, some clasp forearms and spin. A few are fist-fighting while others kiss. They are wild in the eyes but dead in the face. I blink, and they are all Caleb. Hundreds of desperate Calebs wielding axes, toting rifles, adjusting testicles, sobbing, shouting, clawing.

I try to scream but nothing comes out, and I hear his voice again. Run, he whispers. Follow the chicken! Is it coming from Squid? I follow Squid to the fence line, where she cowers in a shadow. She has dug a small hole and gestures at it with her beak. I understand. Caleb has found a way out. He remembered himself, us. I am light and fear and hope as I dig the hole deeper. I stick a hand beneath the fence, preparing to drag myself under it, and a familiar palm finds mine. Soft. The braided sterling of a moonstone ring. Caleb squeezes my hand and I burrow down, into the soil, the damp earth giving way beneath my skin. When I emerge, he takes my face in his palms, and he is all rhinestones, glinting.