2018 is a moment of increased visibility for trans people; recent cultural shifts see far more representation across the media, governance, and health care. But, it is still challenging to locate an entirely trans-specific history, or physical evidence of a past prior to these sudden and current "revelations” of visibility. beside the water, 1999-2004, addresses the erasure of rich legacies of trans and queer activism and art by revisiting and re-imagine these stories from an individuals lived experience. Mining existing archives and creating new ones, the artist proposes alternative modes of retrieving and disseminating a trans past through an erotic gaze and experiments in form and narrative storytelling. beside the water, 1999-2004 is a gesture of abundance where a lack of visual documents exist; a fabricated document of a transgender past. Using love letters and photos of friends and lovers it is a video essay of transmasculine sexual discovery and community formation in the early 2000’s. Defiantly looking towards a future of pleasure, sincerity, and beauty; this work place trans sexual expression in conversation with a non-linear idea of history, that is both real and invented, to address how limited evidence of a past shapes our understandings of the present.