We're in a honeymoon suite, but we're not married. We've signed into the hotel as a newly married couple from Jersey, Mr. and Mrs. Francis George. Signing into hotels as newly weds is our new game, and we adore being treated as a married couple by everybody. It's like we're eternally a honeymooning couple, it never changes. I'm giggling in my bloomers.

"Are those granny panties, Mrs. George?" Frankie laughs, snapping the waistband under my short pink dress with a perfectly curled finger.

"Hahaha! No! They're bloomers! See? They're puffy an-!"

Frankie pulls me onto the bed mid-word and I forget to breathe. Oopsie-woopsie.

"Mm, you smell like cookies," Frankie sniffs into my curly blonde wig. "Cookies made out of cigars and brown sugar."

I allow him to hold me like this, so content I couldn't move if I wanted to. "I love you, Mr. George," I whisper to him as he snuggles his face against my neck, breathing me in.

"I love you, Mrs. George," he sighs happily from behind me.

The floor to ceiling window is bare, the curtains drawn all the way back. I don't know what would cause a maid to do this for a honeymooning couple expected to come in at night, but it's there and I start to notice little white fluffy things falling past it. I gasp and Frankie looks up, immediately concerned.

"Frankie look, it's snowing," I whisper to him in awe.

"The first snow of winter. It's a blessing," he sighs contentedly again, beginning to kiss my neck. I melt, feeling his warm lips wet my neck, wetter and wetter. My arms reach behind me, holding his face as his lips travel upwards. My eyes close, and my breath escapes me, going to another world. A world where it's only us, only this room, only the snow falling just for us: the newly married couple, Mr. and Mrs. George.

"Do you want something to drink?" I ask him, my voice floating from somewhere unknown to me.

"Do they have milk?" he asks like a child.

"Oh I don't know, maybe. I meant wine or champagne?" I whisper to him.

"Do we have to drink that? Do you want some strawberry milk? I can have someone go get a can," he says dreamily to me.

"But I want to drink champagne," I say, my voice a little harsher than I intended.

Frankie parts from me, and reality sets in. The dream, broken.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want you to drink champagne," he says to me, going away from me. My body makes a noise of protest inside, like a wailing kitten. I already miss his warmth, his familiar weight.

"Why, baby? We can do the romantic twisty arm toast," I say, trying to cuddle up to him on the side of the bed.

He slides away from me. My eyes go sad. His eyes are sad, too.

Very quietly, his voice reaches my ears. He sounds a lot younger than he is. His voice shakes just slightly, but this I catch. His innocence comes out. "You always drink too much. It scares me. If you drank a little bit, I wouldn't mind. Two glasses is fine. But you don't stop at two. It's like you don't know how to stop."

I don't know what to say to this. Inside, I am quieted, shocked. Is this what I look like to him? My mouth opens before I'm ready and I instantly regret it, calling myself stupid as I'm saying it.

"Everyone drinks like me, though. Paulie does, Avi does, Carl does. Everyone."

Frankie gives me a deeply upset look, one I can't quite give a name to. Its almost betrayed, mixed with something else.

"Don't you realize they're all drunks," he says in a lighter voice, a disbelieving one. Like he can't believe how stupid I am, but not accusatory. I can't believe how stupid I am.

"I don't want to fight," I sigh, looking down at the white carpeted floor. I feel so guilty inside, because right now I want a drink so bad I can taste it. I yearn for it. I don't want to fight with him, I want to escape. I don't want to deal with this. And this makes me feel like the worst person in the world. What is wrong with me?

"I don't want to fight either. We're not fighting. We're talking. I need to tell you this. I've been thinking about it for a while. Your drinking is scaring me," he tells me gently.

"I'm sorry," I say, but after a second I realize I've said these words in a mocking tone. I don't understand what's going on anymore. Frankie is looking at me like I've hit him and I feel like I have, too.

"I can't believe it," he says in the same disbelieving tone as before. He looks away from me, at the wall. "You're drunk already, aren't you. You drank before you came here."

My eyes go wide and I can't remember. Did I? Did I drink before we went out tonight? When could I have? Fuck. All of the drinking is a blur and I can't remember if I had a drink today.

He's right. I do have a problem. I don't know how to say anything about it, though. What do you say when your boyfriend accuses you of having a drinking problem and you think you might, too, but you don't know how to get the feelings out? What do you say especially when you don't even know if you're drunk and your boyfriend is looking at the wall, avoiding looking at you because you just might be a monster?

I feel so guilty I don't know what to do. I can't touch him. I don't deserve to try to cuddle up to him and say it's going to be alright. It's not going to be alright. I don't know how to make it alright.

Instead, I do the only thing I know how to do and I want to shoot myself in the head.

Gathering up my purse, I start to walk towards the door.

"Where are you going?" he asks from the bed, sounding genuinely concerned. I want to cry. Does he really still care about me? I can't tell.

"To the bar. I'm drunk, right? What else would a drunk do?" I ask, trying not to cry in front of him.

"You can't go to the bar. What if you get so drunk you take off your wig? They'll arrest you."

"I don't care. I just don't. Bye."

Behind me, I hear him call me and tell me to wait, but the door is already closing on his voice, on everything I care about.

It's late, and the snow is still falling down past the window. Frankie hasn't pulled the shades, and I don't know why. But I've returned now, and I'm looking out of that giant window in the dark and I'm crying, because I don't deserve to see the beauty just outside the window. I'm crying, because I suck and I'm an awful person and the man I love is asleep in the bed so I don't have a place to sleep, because I love him and I don't deserve to sleep next to him in the same bed.

Instead, I flop into the large armchair at the edge of the window, the light pink fabric scratching my arms even though it's so pretty. There's that word again, 'pretty'. Goddammit. The chair looked like it would be comfortable, but it isn't and this is nowhere to sleep but what do I deserve?

Sitting here, I can't breathe and my breath goes internally and I start to choke on it. I can't control it, and large giant's tears flood down my face. I am the epitome of the crying drunk right now and I hate myself. I can't even control the volume of my voice as I start to sob. My hands go over my mouth as I try to stop my voice from waking Frankie, but the sound is too loud. I hate myself so much.

My hands start to paw at myself. Everything about myself. My hands fall on my wig, and my brain starts to feel weird. Just stranger and stranger. It wants to know why this hair isn't my own, why is it on my head? Why isn't my hair long like this, curled like this? What is going on? My eyes fall down to my chest. Why can't I feel my own breasts? Why is it like this? Why?

I think I'm going crazy. I think I might have just snapped. Vaguely I can hear myself wailing like a baby, but I can't identify my voice.

The light comes on, from the lamp next to the bed.

"No, don't turn on the light, don't look at me!" I shriek, burying my ugly face in my hands.

"Georgina...what..." comes my lover's familiar voice and I start shaking, hugging myself as the light turns off again.

"No, don't look, don't look..." I cry, whimpering the sounds.

"Georgina, what happened? Are you okay?"

Frankie is at the chair now, kneeled at the arm of it. His lips find my hand, kissing it like a gentleman. Why is he being so sweet to me? I don't deserve that. I don't deserve anything. I want him to go away because he's being so inappropriate.

"I'm stupid, I don't know..." I wail quietly, trying to yank my hand away from him, but he won't budge. He kisses it tenderly again and I want to crumple up inside and die.

"You're not stupid. You just need help. I want to help you," he says sweetly. This makes me cry anew, bucketfuls of tears flooding down my cheeks, wetting what's exposed of my chest. I'm crying like someone died. He puts my hand on his downy cheek, but I'm not comforted at the least.

"I drank today before we went out. I can't remember, but I know I did because I was meeean to you," I wail. "I would never be meeean to you. I don't know what's going on, I can't control myself anymore, Frankiiie..."

He kisses the inside of my hand and I feel confused. He doesn't say anything for a minute, just kissing the inside of my hand lovingly. I don't struggle. He's being so nice.

"Why do you drink, Georgina?" he asks gently, looking up at me. I can't look at him.

"I don't know, I don't-" A thought strikes me and it makes me gasp internally. Suddenly everything has become clear and I know the answer to his question. My body was telling me the answer, and the solution is right in front of me, but it took me this long to understand, to realize.

The wig feels heavy on my head. The corset feels too tight. The heels hurt on feet too wide.

I erupt into sobs, my hand ripping away from Frankie. My hands cover my face as the tears bleed through them. I feel Frankie's arms wrap around my front and he pulls me to him, hugging me the best he can. Holding me.

"I drink because...because..."

He kisses my forehead, my nose. My whole face. My whole ugly fucking face.

"I drink because...I want to be a woman, but I can't be a woman. There is no way for me to be a woman, to be your wife. Do you know how much that hurts? It hurts so much! I drink to make the pain go away, but nothing can make the pain go away. I love you Frankie. I love you. I don't know what to do about any of it. You say you can help me, but I don't know how to help that problem. That one problem..."

Now I'm crying too hard, shaking too hard, to say another word, but Frankie is still holding me. He won't let me go and I want to melt away and never see him again. Never see anyone or anything again. I hate myself and the world around me.

"I told you we will figure out a way," he says gently to me, "I'm trying to figure it out right now. I think about it at every moment. We can be so happy together, and aren't we happy together? You have to have hope, trust me. There is a way to fix this. But drinking is not going to make it better. You have to trust me. I love you, Georgina."

"My name is not Georgina. It's George," I sob into him.

"It's not George. It's Georgina," he whispers back to me, taking my face into his hands and kissing me hard.

And then I really do melt. Crying still, fresh tears falling down my face on old ones, I kiss him back.

Nothing has really changed, and I don't feel any better, but he tries to comfort me the best he can and I have to appreciate that. I love him and he's trying so hard so I try to make him feel better instead. I try to make him think he's comforting me to comfort myself.

Later on, he tucks the covers around us like a caterpillar making a love cocoon and I look at him with my tear stained face. All of my make-up is gone, because I was crying so hard and he tried to clean me up. But for some reason, he still looks at me with a loving face. I can't understand it. But I appreciate it, I love him for it. Tenderly, he strokes my cheek with his fingers and I close my eyes and tears fall again. Just two of them. I feel him kiss both of them, and then the light turns off.