So you can imagine what ideas I had about myself being young transgender women and relationships I would find myself in. Yes, I did find myself in a lot of relationship hijinks and shenanigans but I also found myself in some loving healthy relationships. And those loving relationships are what inspired me to write my thesis film, I can’t pee.

In media we are saturated with tons of narratives where being in love with a transgender woman is scandalous, painful, and tragic. What about the ones that are loving, supportive, and comfortable? We need more stories like that! A quote that always floats in my head is “If they don’t know how to love you, then you have to teach them!” And that’s how I want to approach filmmaking and the stories I tell. I want to always tell trans love stories! I want to show the world how to love trans people, in particular trans women, because the sad reality is we live in a world that doesn’t. My thesis film, One Last Deal, is at its core a love story.

In 2019, the HRC reported that at least 26 trans women were murdered. Most if not all the murders were committed by intimate partner violence. A common opinion is that the violence linked to the idea that trans women trick men into having sex with them. This false narrative is exasperated by that same tired narrative showing transgender women’s stories but not told by transgender people.

I wrote, One Last Deal, as an antithesis to that narrative. I wanted to tell a story that didn’t rely on the main character’s transness as a plot device. When I was workshopping my script in class I was told to focus more on my main character, Sara’s confusion about being trans and having dysphoria.

However, I was more interested in letting her transness be an afterthought. It’s barely mentioned or even acknowledged by Bill or Sara. Why? Because they are past that stage. Bill doesn’t love Sara because she is trans. He loves Sara because she is Sara. And that is that. It was also important for me to show Bill and Sara’s relationship as loving, supportive, and at times goofy. I used that as the spine of the story. We have these two people who are just living life as it comes but are anchored by their love for each other.