Edited by Alloe Mak

753 BCE

There are no women in Rome. Romulus built the city with vagabonds and criminals scattered across Latium, and he settled with them on a hill. But there are no women in Rome, and this is a problem. The vagabonds and criminals cannot birth an empire themselves.

So, Romulus hosts a festival with the Sabines nearby. On his signal, each Roman man seizes a Sabine woman to rape. They will collect their wives, kicking and screaming, and birth and empire this way. The women will not be citizens. They cannot be Roman—but their sons can be. Incubators to replace vagabonds with heroes, and to invent love in the cold places men could not put it. 

1849

There are no women in San Francisco. At least, not women who count. There are people with breasts and vaginas, but here, it takes more to be a woman—something the Mexican women and the Indigenous women do not have, say the miners. You see, being a woman means being a wife, and nobody here can make a wife; not an honest one. 

And so, there are no women in San Francisco, and this is a problem. Not a problem of birth, but a problem of pleasure. The thing about pleasure, however, is that it can be faked. Rocks can be gold, a body can be endless. 

13th century BCE

You are hiding from a war; your name is Achilles. Girl clothes blanket you, your hair smells of roses, and it is braided down your shoulder, clasped with a silver brooch. Nobody shouts for you; nobody brawls; and you dare not admit that you like it. Not just the calm, or the quiet, but the woman whom the handmaidens and princess have come to know. 

1849

They shave your face and tell you to put on a dress. It’s just for the night one man says: there are no women in San Francisco, and we need dancing partners. Something to look at—somebody to hold. The first night, it’s humiliating, only because it’s sudden. The second night, you volunteer. You are glad to be of service, you say. 

Tonight, the bar has already emptied, but you stay fixed to a wall. When you return home, you will have to change, and for some odd reason, this aches. You claw at the wood behind you to pass the time—you try not to notice how everybody is gone. 

A man comes near—near enough that the act is intentional. He asks your name, and you do not give it. 

You ask him: What do I do in a lawless land?

He answers: You love. 

Further Reading:

This is a dramatized, literary piece which intersects storied aspects of the cross-gender practices of the California gold rush with Greco-Roman myth. For more academic information, I primarily consulted Clare Sears’ monumental work: “All That Glitters: Trans-ing California’s Gold Rush Migrations” and the San Francisco gay archives.