Everett Maroon's Blog

My remarks at the 2023 University of Washington Online MPH Graduation

Roughly 72 percent of commencement speeches by graduating students begin with, “Here we are, we made it,” so I am wary of beginning there. Okay, I just made that statistic up off the top of my head. But congratulations are in order! Remember to take time to thank all of your people who supported you these last 18 months, because we all relied on someone for guidance, strength, ad hoc pep-squadding, and more. So thank you, Emile and Lucas, for being patient with me whenever I ran off to work on another school assignment, and thank you so much, Susanne, for always encouraging me and for all the extra labor you had to do while I was in this program.

Meanwhile, the public health sector is in the midst of many crises affecting individual, community, and population health. We are entering into these crises as professionals now, and we will be working in this chaotic environment, in a sector which is challenged by competing mental health needs, substance use disorders, infectious diseases, the rampages of climate change, and persistent health disparities. In listening to everyone’s final ILE presentations this week I was struck by how much the literature talks about system transformation but how little of it is actually happening.

I was working in public health before I entered this program, but I had previously felt like an outsider or an interloper. Now that I can put MPH after my name, and trust me, I already ordered new business cards, I’m not sure I feel very different about my location to the field. You may feel similarly, that you are too small to change large-scale outcomes around type II diabetes, maternal health for Black women, opioid overdose rates among unstably housed people, improving cancer diagnosis, increasing hepatitis B vaccination rates for Asian Amerians, or cleaning up neighborhood soils or particulate matter as industry just chugs more waste into the environment.

But there are more than two dozen of us in our cohort. We are not one person, we are many. Some of us will create new interventions and will show that they are more efficient at improving health than the last interventions, or as my older son would say, “take that, previous science!” Some of us will apply our training around prioritizing racial justice to our current professions, and that commitment will create ripple effects in our areas of influence. Others are moving into policy, and may re-orient the state or their region so that many lives at once will have better access to health care. None of us, in other words, are actually in this alone.

At our after-class toast on Thursday night, I asked those in attendance if the reasons you applied to the program were still your motivators at the end of the program. I was surprised to see unanimous agreement, although we talked about how much we’d learned, or we mentioned the new ideas we were incorporating into our vision of public health and how we wanted to interact with those visions. Enrolling in this program was a good thing we all did! I grant you permission, although of course you don’t need my permission, to reflect back from time to time on what called you to this field, whenever you think you need a reset. Depending on what part of the field you’ll work in, you might need to reflect more or less often. (As someone who works in HIV and substance use, I reflect quite OFTEN.) Or as my younger son said in the midst of COVID-19, “I just build LEGOs to reduce stress.”

If the work might be at times stressful, public health is also a brilliant conduit for opening up vital discussions around the consequences of unchecked privilege and their specific effects on population health. I can hardly think of a more relevant example than the extreme greed of the Sackler family. In their successful attempts to become billionaires, they manufactured a nationwide opioid dependence by promising they had created a non-addictive narcotic, Oxycontin, that would cure us all of pain forever, which led us directly annual to the 100,000 overdose deaths we see today. This week research was released showing that fully ten percent of Americans have a close familial relation who has died of an opioid overdose. That is just staggering.

This periscope into the whys of our health challenges is a fundamental strength public health work. Public health practitioners have sounded alarm bells on toxic waste sites like the Love Canal, they’ve called out cancer clusters, they routinely work through individual stories of trauma to identify the patient zero when tracking down infectious disease in a community, they assess unsafe food handling practices in the marketplace, and we all know, post-pandemic, that they quarantine people when needed to keep a community safe. My family and I were quarantined in 2013 when I brought pertussis to Walla Walla County after getting coughed on for two hours on a flight from LA, but that’s another story for another day. But the point is, public health has this history, not completely unproblematic history, of course, of linking A to B and of beginning important conversations around association and causation, in an effort to improve health, lives, and systems. And now we are a part of that history and practice. If we have critiques of those problematic elements, we also have the capacity to do the future work in public health differently, with those limitations in mind.

I’m so excited for the work we all will do. I know our contributions will not be small. They mostly won’t be easy, either, although I am here for the quick wins whenever they show up. Public health has been politicized, and I have been struck by the uneasy realization that there is no public health intervention that takes place outside of the political sphere. So dig in, you know why you want to do this work, and you are ready to tackle these big challenges. The cohorts of students ten, twenty years from now, ought to be looking at a robust history of declining disparities, because people like you and made a real difference. That’s what I wish for us all, brilliant ideas among servant leaders in public health who built relationships and made our lives better. Congratulations, colleagues! I’m proud of every single one of us.

Tap tap, is this thing on?

Well, the last four years have been an adventure, I suppose. I ran for office in 2018 for the state house in my legislative district, and came in a distant second, but the experience itself was life-affirming. My kids got older and I no longer have any diaper duty. Susanne went through the tenure process and has settled in as an Associate Professor, and is working on her next book.

My book projects, on the other hand, are a bit . . . quiet. I have a full draft of the Unintentional sequel, but I have a POV issue to resolve, and an improved ending to write. I stopped trying to sell short stories when work got busy.

My work, well, that has grown, which makes sense, as it has been my focus these last four years. It’s no longer a sleepy little nonprofit with a tiny caseload. When I walked in the door in July 2010, I literally wiped up the dusty keyboard to a then 11-year-old iMac. Its memory was half-filled with photos and music files of Yanni, for no discernible reason. I mean, I guess some people really like Greek air flute music, or whatever. There were four employees, two of whom were extremely part-time, I was slotted for 20 hours a week, and one full-time case manager. We ran the whole deal on $180,000 a year.

These days the agency has an annual budget of $3.4M, 27 employees, 3 of whom are part-time advisory board members, 3 staff who are part-time, and the rest of whom are full-time. We’ve got somewhere on the order of 200 clients across half a dozen programs, and a vehicle fleet, which still blows my mind. Nobody’s computer is older than 3 years. But along with this growth has been a shift in the time I have to dedicate to writing, and that is a cost I am willing to bear a while longer. At some point though, I want to get back to it.

In the interim of 2018 and now my mother passed away, from appendix cancer that spread to her lungs. I spent roughly two-and-a-half months with her in that last year of her life. It was time well spent, but saying goodbye to her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, by far. Double mastectomy and sex changes, and catching Lucas at his birth, and hearing that my Dad had died after the fact, saying goodbye was excruciating. And then she didn’t die, and I got to see her again! But when I left in early January 2019 (as opposed to leaving shortly before Christmas 2018), was the last time. Saying goodbye again was also painful, although somehow, slightly less so. I’m grateful she is no longer in pain.

The pandemic could be a great reason I stopped blogging, but of course that wouldn’t explain the first two years of my absence. I just ran out of time in the day as work became more involved. Years ago I jokingly said that my goal was to make the agency too complicated for me to run it anymore. Now I realize what a stupid thing that is to say. It’s definitely more complicated, and I’ve driven away at least one bookkeeper in the process, but I am still hard at the work, as is the staff.

But to be clear, the pandemic has been a trying time, as I know it has been for nearly everyone. I like many others try to mediate my risk on a daily basis, but I’m not wearing my mask as vigilantly as I once was. I do watch the transmission rates, for what that’s worth (I’m sure we are missing a lot of data and that the accuracy of the published transmission rates are no longer great). I get my boosters and last week the boys got their boosters. I still don’t get on a plane or run through the grocery store open-faced (like a sandwich). But I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t fatigued by it.

Once upon a time this blog was to communicate with my social fabric of friends as Susanne and I made our way across the continent from DC to Walla Walla. It became my lifeline to sanity as I faced two years of unemployment because nobody in Walla Walla would hire me (or Portland, or Seattle, for that matter) in the wake of the 2008 Great Recession. Now I am the job creator, a fine twist of fate. When I was writing, jobless, and looking to get noticed as an author this blog was a requirement oft-referred to by agents, none of whom contracted with me. Somehow I published two books anyway, and army-crawled my way through the publishing industry. Then this blog was part of my writerly persona.

Now? What now? I think time will tell. Speaking of time, I don’t have a lot of it, between work, a master’s program in public health, two tweens, and a beautiful spouse, but I will commit to at least one post a week, and see how it goes. I’ll have some unpublished stories on here, thoughts about the work I do, reflections on speculative fiction, and possibly some political posts, but honestly I’d like to focus on other topics for a while.

I hope you are well, and if you made it this far, welcome back.

Therapeutic Memory Reversal

Author’s Note: I’m doing my own mini-McSweeny’s, running pieces of fiction that received multiple rejections from semi-pro or professional paying markets. This story has come close to acceptance half a dozen times but I need to move on to other ideas. I hope you enjoy it for what it is.

[image error]Ze lifts the small crystal cover with one finger and pushes the red knob underneath it. With zir other hand ze holds down a metal knob and turns the instrument clockwise one, two tight clicks, waiting for the trickle of memories to start flowing through zir headpiece. Ze braces zir arms on the counter, the room lights kept low because receiving memories is still painful, even if they get easier to acquire over time.

The sessions with Dad went too far. Well. Really ze doesn’t know what went wrong. Ze only sometimes recalls expressions on people’s faces from before the time on ship. So ze—I—sneak back here and try unlocking another piece. When the other me isn’t busy living a hellishly boring existence.

Ze—I, I, I—I will merge us.

Soon.

After the scandal and the election some people said it’s the memories that are gone, cauterized by the pulse of this evil, wild device. But ze wonders if maybe just the pathways are gone, and it can rebuild them, like a new bridge, or a portal. I have to try.

He only thinks he is happy.

Zir finger hovers over a green button. Sweat has lined up across my forehead and the back of my neck. I feel a Pavlovian lump in my throat. Before ze can change its mind, I turn the knob two more clicks. This is going to hurt.

 

Music blasting away in my eardrums, lights flashing from overhead, disinfectant and spilled beer fights for presence in the air against narrow streams of confetti. She kisses me and I press into the length of her. I think we’re supposed to be dancing but maybe we’ve done enough of that already and now all I can think of is tasting her from wherever she will let my tongue wander. People around us cheer, I think for some kind of political thing that has just happened like maybe an election of somebody we like … and then the memory hurtles back to me … the woman who promised an end to the witch hunts. Maybe we are no longer headliners in the long line of people labeled enemies of the state from the previous president … yes that was it. But I feel like I could kiss her forever.

There’s a hand on my shoulder, breaking up my moment with Enez. Enez, yes.

—Congratulations, he says, this short man standing next to us, dressed in the uniform of the science ministry. He has helped come up with the evidence that we are also good citizens. He looks tired, has for months, but now there is a smile under his brown beard.

—Thank you, I say, hoping I can leave the party soon. Why do I want to leave?

—I hope this isn’t too bittersweet for you, Caterna. He fidgets a little with his hands.

—I’m okay, Gryph, thank you for asking.

He means something about my father.

Enez pulls me tight and gives him a nod. She is something like a third of a meter taller than him, and while we appreciate him he never knows when to leave.

—Go celebrate, Gryph, you’ve earned it, she says to him, pulling a pay stick out from her bra and handing it to him. Gryph looks unsure about touching it but takes it, waves to us, and wanders over to the bar. Her long black hair closes around our faces like a privacy curtain.

—I wish I were a quid paystick, I say in her ear.

—Oh you’ll do better than that before the end of the night, she tells me, just before biting lightly on my earlobe.

 

Then it is done, the memory trailing away like a dream after waking. I feel spent, sore, with stabbing sensations running down my arms all the way to zir fingerprints. Time to go back to quarters. It is exhausting cutting into his sleep cycles like this, but I want to be sewn whole again. We need our memory back.

I.

I check the hallway, the only one in this section with a broken camera. I may have had something to do with that.

Under the covers in my quarters, I release this body back to my other self.

#

My bed sheets and night clothes are damp, as I wake up annoyed by the beeping alarm of my caffeine machine. Goddamn facilities department is going to get another work ticket from me, because clearly it is too warm in my quarters. They took away our direct access to climate controls a couple of years ago, on the promise that they would keep our units comfortable. If I am creating a mini-lagoon in my bed most nights, clearly I am not comfortable.

I get up and shuffle into my miniscule wash room and turn on the water, impatient for it to reach temperature. I might not want to drown in my own perspiration, but I don’t fancy a cold shower, either.

My intercom dings and I know from the tone who is calling me because after one night of drinking I’d programmed in stupid alerts for ten of my closest friends.

—Answer com, I say loudly, and then a portion of my wash room wall lights up with my friend Henri’s face.

—Hey Ferrick, oh my God man, don’t answer when you’re still naked! How many times I gotta tell you that?

The grimace on his face is priceless.

—How many times I gotta tell you not to call so early, I say through toothbrush foam. I spit the paste and water mixture onto the mirror where his face is. For good measure, I wink. He automatically wipes at his face and then grumbles at me.

—Okay, fine. I just wanted to remind you to bring your shin guards to work. Cup play starts tonight.

Like I would forget the tournament.

—Thank you, Henri. I will be there tonight and I will cover your ass.

—Please, Ferr, I will cover yours. Asshole.

We are both power forwards, and best friends.

—See you at lunch, I say, walking to my dresser. Henri’s face jumps from the wash room to my quarters where presumably he has a much better view of all of me. He puts one hand over his eyes like he’s trying to block out the sun. His loss.

—For Christ’s sake, get dressed, man. Bye.

His image disappears with a quiet click. He didn’t even give me time to wag my business at him.

I am lucky enough to have a room close to where I work, because some of us are twenty floors and four sections away from our duty stations. The ship is enormous, too large to ever dock anywhere. It contains roughly nine percent of Earth’s population before we disembarked the planet. To service all of us we rely on self-sufficient food production, solar energy, and near-constant supply shuttles from other, smaller vessels. I’m on the team that manages those rendezvous maneuvers. Because if we get hit in deep space, it will be a catastrophe. My work team may have higher stress levels than most, but we get very short commutes.

Jhim, the crew chief, greets me as I hold up my work pass to the engineering doors, and then I am through them into the large bay.

—Good morning, Ferrick, he says and then he turns back to his work. He used to be friendlier but work has been intense lately as we’ve started procedures for entering deep space. In a few months we will exit the only solar system humans have ever known. We don’t really know what we will find in interstellar space, just pretty good guesses.

I head up to my desk and turn on the treadmill. I like to walk as I work, it keeps my brain engaged somehow, and it helps minimize the power needed to my computer since the machine is hooked up to our power grid. Overnight I’ve received forty messages because the other “hemisphere” of the ship is on a reverse shift from us. Too much of my work is about responding to people I’ve never met in person.

—How could you, begins one message when suddenly I have some weird non-memory of a man asking me the very same question. I shake it off, blaming Henri for interrupting me before I got my caffeine drink this morning. But the snippet of a sentence bugs me. It feels like déjà vu.

—Ferrick, says one of my teammates as she taps me on the arm, —come on, end of shift.

—What? I look at Numes, my coworker. She’s giving me a smile but she looks worried. She’s a brilliant mathematician and she is tiny enough to fit in my suitcase. She also doesn’t get concerned easily.

The lights blink out one by one around our unit; automatic shutoffs to conserve energy. They turn off at the end of a shift, and whenever we are out of solar range for more than a few days.

—Sure, right, I say, grabbing my pack. Where did the day go? I want to look at my computer screen to see what I accomplished because for some reason I can’t recall what I’ve done today. I feel pain in my throat, must be coming down with something.

Numes waits for me, lingers, and dusts off her forearms looking for something to do in the six seconds it takes me to leave my desk. She’s always been really nice to me.

I look around and we are the last two people in the bay. If I strain I can visualize what happened today but it feels far away. I don’t like thinking about it, so I appreciate it when Numes distracts me again.

—What’s going on for you tonight, she asks as we head into the traffic hall.

—It’s the first night of Cup play, I say, rather automatically. I do love playing. I smile a little, maybe I can break through this sudden funk.

—Oh, that’s wonderful, she says, looking relieved. —Well, have a great time, try to cover Henri’s ass.

—I’ll tell him you said that, I shout at her as she walks away. I trot off to the stadium. Four decks down, two sections leeward. If I use the stairs I can get warmed up.

Henri is pacing near the front doors when I show up.

—What the hell man, where have you been?

—It’s not even started yet, I say. I’m panting from running the whole way.

Henri has been swearing too, and he wipes it from his bald head with a small towel. Henri sweats a lot when he’s agitated, so I guess he’s agitated.

—You dissed me for lunch, Ferr.

—I’m sorry. I just got tied up at work.

HOW COULD YOU

—Look, I know the shit you do is important, but so is this because like, what the hell else do we have out here? I was only asking for twenty minutes of your time. We could have talked strategy for tonight. He looks at me and drops his arms like he is giving up on me.

—I’m really sorry, Henri.

I don’t know what else to say. I feel nauseated.

—Okay, okay, well come inside and we’ll talk it over with you quickly during the shootaround. He seems somewhere between annoyed and concerned.

He puts his arm across my shoulders, leading me into the stadium. Bright lights mounted around the top of the interior dome do a great job of imitating actual sunlight. Something about the light in here always makes me feel good. But I have a frightening sensation that I’m not right, somehow.

I watch the players on the field, practicing passing with each other and taking kicks at the nets on either end of the field. Behind them on the scoreboard the tallies blink with each tap of a player’s foot, since the ball knows which player came into contact with it last. My great-great-grandmother had been one of the last referees in the sport before the computerized balls and nets made refereeing obsolete. I try to recall her name as I make my way down the stadium steps to the grass.

—Hey you’re late, Ferrick, says the coach, a burly man named Arlo who is something like an overgrown koala, especially around the ears.

—Sorry, coach, I say, fumbling in my bag for my uniform and cleats. Coach A will probably complain if I head to the locker room to get changed, so I trot to the sideline and get dressed as fast as I can. I take a quick swig of water next to the player’s bench, trying to push the pain out of my throat, before running out to the field. Maybe playing will help me feel more normal.

IT’S NOT NORMAL

But instead my stomach hurts. I don’t even know what I ate for lunch, or if I had lunch, or where my day went. I try to hear the directions from Henri and my other teammates as we practice our shot set up. I was the top scorer in the league last season. Now I’m having trouble finding my feet.

In an instant I face plant into the turf; in the next I taste copper and swallow a tooth. Henri, Arlo, and a few other players race over to me.

NOT NORMAL

—Christ, are you okay, man? asks, Henri, looking deep into my eyes. He waves his finger in front of my face and asks me to follow it. Strangely, I feel like crying but I can’t quite place my feelings, it’s like the edge of space reaching out to me, it wants to swallow me into its vacuum and I know I’ll burst, but I feel mesmerized, curious. What comes after I explode into airlessness? What is beyond the black holes we’ve navigated around as we look for a habitable planet?

I’m in shock. This is what shock is, being stuck. Say something, reassure them.

Arlo gets in my face, too. Now all I can see are extreme close ups of Henri, Coach A, and the blinding sun-equivalent lights. Almost like they’re projected on the walls of my quarters.

BUT I AM NORMAL

—I think he’s stunned, says the coach to Arlo.

—He must be concussed.

I open my mouth to speak, finally, but globs of black blood come out instead. No more annoying lights. Everything goes dark.

 

#

 

It is not accustomed to speaking up to them, but the vote is over so ze feels brave. She. She feels brave. She walks in, sees the backs of them, they’re watching the screen with the final returns, their arms around each other in quiet defeat, as they ignore the disappointed people who had gathered here to celebrate another term.

Actually, it’s probably not a good time to talk to them, but who knows, maybe it’s perfect because they’ll already be numb to whatever other news comes their way that they’ll hate. And they will hate this.

Her mother is the first to turn around. The doctor, the other doctor, as has been mentioned in so many political advertisements for her father’s campaign. Because who can argue against two terrifically brilliant, beautifully manicured people who just want to help the real citizens who deserve so many great things? It’s kind of them to help people who get in their own way, after all.

Her mother looks surprised to see her. Me. To see me. It’s me, I’m her, but not her, not to them, anyway.

It is so confusing.

I look for a smile, even a softening of her stance. We have fought so much. She has scarcely turned around before he pivots on his heel toward me, and then his frown lines deepen. This was a bad idea. I should go. So many people are here, so hurt and angry, angry at me for being the trans freak that sullied their good name, made them look like fools in the tabloids. I had never placed myself in the bull’s eye of his politics until just this moment, a heartbeat too late for reckoning.

I just wanted to have one last moment with them. I don’t even know why. This is stupid.

—How dare you show up here, he says. His voice sounds like a growl.

—I’m sorry the election didn’t go your way, I say.

—Are you? asks my mother. Every silver hair is in place. I can never get my hair to behave, but she is all about having every atom obey her will.

—Yes. I know what this meant to you.

Does it matter that I am happy with the outcome? I suppose it does matter to them.

—I don’t want any more of your lies, says my father, waving me off. His pallor is gray, with bits of duskiness under his cheekbones. Why does he want to be leader anyway? It’s clearly killing him.

—I’ll go, I say. This isn’t the goodbye I envisioned. But ze—I—have always been wrong about my parents.

He gives a signal to his security team, and although I protest, they wrap around me like tenacious vines and I can’t break away. I am wrong to think that my parents care even a little bit about me. I am dead wrong.

 

#

 

I wake up in the dark room, the computer screen glowing in front of me, revealing the date of memories I’ve accessed this time: Election night, seven years ago. Oh why did the computer pick that one, I wonder, because it should know I’m not ready for that. Of course, it was made to obliterate memory, not recover it. It was supposed to make us our best selves, free us from the memories holding us back. We never asked my father if our pain was foundational or necessary.

I suppose ze is tired of not knowing. I crave cohesion. The pain is horrible, breaking down neural walls placed there artificially. Realizing slowly that I am now multiple people. Working through savagery when I should have been celebrating my own independence.

The tears roll down my cheeks, and she—I, damn it—probe the hole formed from my missing tooth. It took hours for Ferrick’s friends to leave me alone. I reassured them maybe a hundred times that I wasn’t going to pass out again, and I begged them not to take me to the infirmary. I have not wandered into Ferrick’s life this much before but I’m getting closer—more daring, maybe—to integration.

I look at today’s date on the screen, trying to ground myself. It’s time to sneak back to my quarters. I am me. I am she. I am once again back to stealth until I can know enough of who I am from this unseen archive of memory to tell everyone again. I think Ferrick senses I am here. I want his bravado even if I will end him as he knows himself. I suppose I can find it ironic that I know how to rebuild the decrepit memory therapy tool because my father invented it.

But it’s all a bit much, even for me, even or especially after all of this.

I close my eyes, enjoying the quiet. Not much on this ship is quiet.

I breathe in, hold it for seven beats, exhale for eight. I exit the memory program and remove the data stick and hide it under a floor panel. As I learn more of myself, I feel the absence of Enez more. Emotions crystallize like a ghost becoming corporeal. It was a brutal time, and it will be a long while before I restore the specific memories of losing her, but for now I have enough remade that I can remember our love for each other.

—Ferrick, dude, what are you doing in here?

It’s Henri.

I whirl around in the chair and see him standing in the doorway, the hallway light flooding into the tiny room that is basically an abandoned janitor’s closet.

I try to come up with an excuse, but he is already moving to the computer desk and examining it.

—What the fuck is this thing?

—It’s nothing, it’s private. I’m not coming up with anything good, and now my heart thuds in my chest, like even my heartbeat is a discovered secret.

—I’ve never seen anything like this since … holy shit, did you recreate Dr. Crucet’s neural manipulator? Ferrick?

He looks scared. My father did not leave power quietly and anything reminiscent of him would scare most of the people on this ship.

—How did you find me? I ask. It’s a perfectly reasonable question, I guess.

—You left your comm link on, he says, still staring at the machine. —You were concussed and I wanted to check on you. He looks again at the instrument panel I’ve jury rigged together.

—This looks just like the machine in the old news stories. What the hell are you doing?

—It’s a long story, and I’m too tired to explain.

—You know what kind of damage this torture device causes?

—I’m familiar with it, yes.

He stares at me, sizing me up maybe, or looking at me like I’m some imposter of myself. I am suspect of something now. How could I not be?

—How the hell could you recreate this? Why?

He’s sweating and I can smell his electrolyte loss. It’s not good.

—I told you, I’m tired.

—I have to report this, Ferr.

—No!

Now I am in hyperdrive, trying to find some way to get him to change his mind.

I go with the truth. I’m not a good liar, even if I am pretty solid at hiding things. I just can’t affirmatively misrepresent things.

—I’m trying to restore my own memory.

This is a big admission—we all had to go through extensive psychological testing before being allowed on ship and off the planet. In my defense I didn’t know my own history when I applied for the position. And nobody else on board does, either.

—What do you mean, restore? You’re not—you can’t be one of his victims.

—Oh? Why not?

—Because … you’re so normal, a regular guy.

—Well, I’m not, really. But I’m working on becoming my own normal.

I don’t tell him Ferrick is some empty personality created in the image of my father, who he wanted me to be. Ferrick’s not an awful person. The problem is he’s not me.

—Ferrick, you could get kicked off the ship for this.

I don’t really know what that would mean. Scut work on a transport, maybe. A bed in an increasingly reliable but still unstable, long-term hibernation system. A 4-person mining ship in a converted shuttle, because the mining fleet has been lost for decades, since the conflict that drove us from Earth. We can’t really afford to lose any more people.

—I know, but Henri, I need to do this. Can you try and understand before you inform on me? I’m just repairing my own damage.

And let me tell you, it sucks, so give me a break.

He sighs, sounding somewhere between afraid and angry. I can’t read anyone anymore. But I have recently figured out that I was in the midst of transitioning. This must be why my father erased so much of my memory, why he did it so crudely and not in his careful, seamless way, because he was running out of time as leader. He knew the new government would shut his entire program down. He had to correct his son before she could live openly as a woman.

I’m sitting here devastated, while my jaw aches and the electrical stimulation still burns up and down my spine, and I’m wondering what I need to do to Henri to shut him up so I can have more time with myself.

—What are the memories like? What did he erase?

—They’re painful for the most part. And there’s nothing I can do about them except sit with them. All of these people are gone now.

We both know Earth was lost six years ago now. Nothing lives there. Every scan we’ve run comes back with the same sad result.

I look at him, the tiniest bit of my body language shifts, feels more feminine, more at peace. He doesn’t notice the change, but I do.

—Henri, for better or for worse all we have is each other now, and the Cup, and the journey. I will be much more productive and whole if you let me have this. I’m a very good engineer and the ship needs me. And we are friends.

He nods. He’s parsing through a lot of information—for him. I of course am wading through one thousand times as much, and it is all way more personal for me. He’s considering what to tell the quartermaster and I am considering how to continue being me despite who I increasingly reveal to be a conflicted, terrorized person. So shit if I can do it, so can Henri. But I don’t tell him any of this. I know I am thirty steps ahead of him and what he knows about me.

I just wait.

—We are friends. You’re my best friend, Ferrick.

—And you are mine, Henri.

—It can get lonely out here.

—It can, yes.

We are sharing more than words, I presume. I fight dwelling in a thought of Henri waking alone in the middle of the night, sad, with an alienating erection, filled with worry about the day ahead. Or maybe that’s only my experience.

—Please tell me what is going on with you. I might surprise you by being awesome about it.

Tears cut down my face; I am not ready for having such long-restrained emotions come out of me. For half a minute, I gasp for breath and then I emerge from the panic and manage to breathe out my last bit of resistance.

—I’m very scared to tell you, so if I tell you, you need to be more than awesome.

—I’m here, man.

Man. Ugh.

I feel a wave of self-loathing and yet I string together all the assembled memories, the full story. The whole while Henri sits on the floor, looking at various parts of me and the small room. Sometimes he nods, sometimes he mutters frail words to encourage me to keep talking. I run out of words and then tell him that’s all I know, for now.

I wait for a reaction. I wait for a couple of minutes while he thinks everything over, I suppose.

—We should go back to bed, he says. I nod and stand up, fighting a burst of vertigo.

—Come on, I’ll walk you back, he says.

—Are you okay? I ask.

—I’m okay. I don’t know what you’re going though. I’m here for you and I’ll help you.

He takes my hand and holds it and pulls me out of the room. It’s a gesture I don’t directly remember having the entire time on this ship. It reminds me of something, but I can’t place it. I should probably brace myself for having more of that feeling.

I shut the closet door behind me and hear the lock fail. Now I have another worry, but I make a mental note to come back after he disappears around the curve from my quarters. I have to fix it. I have to fix it. And me. But at long last I think I am on my way.

 

THE END

From My Hard Drive

Author’s Note: This is a reprint of a short story than originally ran in SPLIT Quarterly.

Underwater

He weaves the thick strips of brown leather together slowly, seemingly fascinated that they have a smooth and a rough side. On the suede he traces his index finger slowly, almost lovingly, pushing against the grain, and then smoothing it down with the grooves of his fingerprints.

She looks him over, wanting to make eye contact and knowing he’s not about to grant that small favor to her.

“Hi, honey,” she says, in as much sing-song as she can muster.

He goes about looping another strip of belt material into the snake he already created. She sees that he is making a neat pattern of light and chocolate brown leather. A bit of sweetness in this bland, quiet universe of his. His hair is tousled, even matted in a few places, and he smells a little of urine. Smelling that upsets her. She needs to speak to the staff about that.

She flinches as a man, across the floor from her, squeals at a piece of Formica that is escaping the countertop one increment at a time, near the arts and crafts station. He is suddenly obsessed, slipping his fingers under it and listening to the flap as it slaps back down where it was still glued in place. Flap, flap, flap, flap.

“What are you making there,” she asks the beltmaker.

He continues the pattern. “Water,” he whispers.

She feels warmth on her shoulder, a strong hand. “Hello, Mrs. Alexander. How are you today?”

The doctor sits down next to her, the chair too short for his gangly frame. He is a man who had never filled out into his bones.

“Oh, I’m okay,” she says. “I see he has a new project.”

“He’s really quite talented at these. All of the staff have one from him now.”

“Really? I just saw him two days ago.” They look at him, who is adding a buckle to the end of the belt. She notices that his fingers are calloused in exactly the places where they touched the leather.

“He’s fast. And we’re almost out of supplies,” says the doctor. “Hopefully he likes the next craft project Samira gives him.”

She doesn’t know Samira. She wants to reach out and touch his tired hands, but remembers and knows better. The doctor motions for her to follow him to his office. She gives him one last look before walking away.

The office is full of awards and certificates, but there is still a place for her to sit.

“Any progress, doctor,” she asks, frowning more than she means to.

“Not so far,” he says, pushing his wireframes up on his nose. “Sometimes it takes a while to find the right medicine. We’ll get there. He’s still got his obsession, but his delusions are significantly better.”

“I just miss him,” she says, thinking about his calloused hands.

“Angela, I think you should seek your own therapy about this. I can recommend someone if you like.”

“I’m okay, doctor.” She forces a smile that they both know is fake.

“Look, any kind of mental illness—you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“Yes, I know,” she says.

“It’s not your fault.”

“I know.”

But it is, she thinks. Not that I have any way of explaining it to you.

She walks back into the main room. He sits there, not moving, looking off into space, having run out of leather pieces. She holds her shoulder bag tight against her coat.

“Sweetheart, do you need me to bring anything for you next time?”

“I couldn’t fight the water,” he said, not necessarily to her.

“It’s okay, honey, you did your best.”

“I lost her.” His lower lip quivers and then settles down.

She feels a hard stone in her throat. “You were so brave,” she says. She sees the corners of his mouth turn up ever so slightly. His eyes look watery.

The doctor appears next to her. He whispers in her ear: “It’s best not to play into his delusion.”

“You’re right,” she says. She pauses. “Mark, sweetheart, I have to go now. But I’ll come see you soon.”

He fumbles with the half-finished belt, still feeling the lines of it with his fingers.

She wants to spend more time with him, but she can’t bear this place.

She walks out to the parking lot, her breath falling behind her as quickly evaporating mist, and once she gets inside the car she puts her hands to her face and breathes hard, a tearless cry. At some point she takes in one long inhale, closes her eyes, feeling the memory around her. When she is done she starts the engine, seeing the dashboard lights come on for a moment, and asking the heater to clear the windshield of the fog.

The clouds hang low and look like they won’t hold the snow away much longer. She parks on what is a busy-street-turned-ghost-town. A long line of uneven row houses slowly decays into the broken concrete sidewalks, their striped awnings fading to become as drab and depressed as the many plywood-filled windows that have replaced glass panes. This had been a pleasant city street 30 years ago when they were children.

She turns the doorknob, not bothering to knock. In the dark room she sees the old man in his easy chair, nursing the end of a cigar. He has smoked so much the wall at the corner closest to him is stained yellow.

“You again,” he notes, his voice is full of gravel. Puff, puff, on the Cuban. “So soon?”

“It’s been six months,” she argues.

Puff puff puff.

“So it has. You are not here to celebrate your anniversary.” Now he rolls the butt of the cigar between his thumb and fingers, listening to the leaves on fire inside.

“I don’t think it worked.” She looks for a place to sit, among the classic furniture, then thinks better of it.

“It worked.”

“He’s lost his mind.”

“That is from you. I told you, you must find every bit of evidence and destroy it.” Puff puff.

“I did exactly as you said,” she says plaintively. The old man’s skin is tired leather, like Mark’s belts. He inhales and lights up the end of the stogie, and then his head is in a cloud. Her eyes are stinging.

“Now now, I know that isn’t true, or he would be a well man. And he is not a well man, is he?”

“He remembers,” she says, looking at the worn area rug, moth damage to the corner nearest her.

“The mind is a very stubborn thing,” he says, admiring the end of his cigar before snuffing it out in tall a metal ashtray. “And still,” he says, drawing a figure in the ash with the cigar butt, “the best smoke is the first of the day. I spend the rest of my time wishing any of it were as good.”

He sighs as he stands up. He motions for her to follow him, shuffling into a room off of the dining room, in the back of the house. It is filled with sagging bookshelves and stacks of hardcover books piled up in every free corner, two and three feet high. The cigar smell is replaced in here by the scent of dust and yellowing paper. Old newspaper clippings are framed near one of the stacks, showing a much younger version of him receiving some sort of award. He finds a wooden hinged box, opens it, and pulls out a tiny, antique hourglass.

“Here,” he says, cupping the glass in her hand, pressing it into her palm. He will not let her go until he has finished speaking, she knows. “This time you must do it right. Very bad things will happen if you stop early.”

She takes it and listens to his instructions, feeling like everything has been off-balance from the moment her fingers curled around the glass and wood and sand. She promises him.

*   *   *

Angela sits on the edge of the bed, looking at the small scorch mark on the low dresser. It could have happened yesterday because it still looks fresh.

She isn’t sure what makes her think this attempt will work. Her fingers tighten around the hourglass, which she hasn’t put down yet. Instructions from the old professor are in her coat pocket. She stands up and stays there, wanting to identify some wisp of inspiration that has up until now eluded her imagination. She loses track of time, slowly and slightly rocking, in that way that muscles do because they don’t actually stop moving until death.

She opens a small, long drawer just under the burn mark and pulls out a photo, the last picture. It is scarred along one edge where fire had lapped at it before it had jumped out from the pile. She reprimands herself again for taking this as a sign it could be saved from destruction.

She looks at the two of them, up close and laughing, sharing the same eyes and chin, knowing even this last picture will disappear. She tucks it into the corner of the vanity mirror that leans on the dresser, a tall frame discovered next to a café on a potholed highway in Vermont. It was much heavier than they thought it would be, and they dropped it once, chipping a corner. She likes things that aren’t quite perfect. But not this imperfect.

Down the stairs, to the glass dining table, a wedding present from his parents, the place for family dinners. She smoothes out the scrap of paper and recites the old man’s prayer, flipping the hourglass over and watching the blond grains emigrate to the bottom of the glass. Then she does as she was told and pours a white powder into a small glass, drinks it, and lies down on their green couch, in another expansive and professionally decorated room. It isn’t long before she falls asleep.

The sound of the phone ringing infuses itself into whatever she’d been dreaming and then wakes her. It’s a nurse from a hospital in the next county. A freak water main break and her husband’s car was washed out, the nurse says in a smashed tone. She recalls from memory the next series of conversations from the last time she had them—their young child strapped into the protective child seat, Mark unable to free her before she was swept away by the rushing water. She already knows he was bruised and battered when he was found, his leg shattered and his lungs collapsed. The nurse doesn’t tell her that her daughter is dead, because the child’s mother still needs to drive to the hospital, and this is the worst news possible.

No. No no no, she thinks. Her dream fog has already cleared. Her pulse pounds and she’s angry that time has only gone back to the moment of disaster. She promised the old man, damn it.

She thinks of the hourglass, and runs to check it as the nurse is telling her what she has already heard.

There, stuck in the crook of the device, ten or so grains remaining, unfallen. One little tap on the wood and they would have plummeted to the pile of sand two inches below. She hears the nurse ask her to drive to the medical center because her husband may be dying. Physically, she knows he will make it. Mentally, he’ll never stop mourning. Five years of mourning and he was never the same. She still wishes, even after all of this, that she could just erase his memory, but now she understands that his mind is both stronger and weaker than magic.

She swallows hard and swipes her keys off the dining room table, leaving fingerprints on its surface as her hand moves. She will take her ruined partner home in a few days. And then she has no idea how to live through it again.

Vote, Donate, Volunteer

I had the honor of speaking at a fundraiser for the 16th Legislative District in Washington State (I’m one of their two state committee members), along with another local activist, Jessica Monterey, and former Governor of Maryland, Martin O’Malley. Here is the text of my speech:

Hello, everyone, and thank you for coming. One year and two days ago I stood behind the podium in the Press Secretary’s briefing room pretending to take a question from Gwen Ifill, enthusiastic about the possibilities for 2017. It was an exciting time.

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We are now four days away from the next election, which may seem like it pales in comparison to last year’s contest for the White House. But despite our bitter disappointment from last November, on Tuesday we have new opportunities to reset our collective political future. We will launch the political careers of three progressive people in Walla Walla to city council, or we will fail to do so. We will elect Manka Dhingra to our state legislature in the 45th LD and either shift the balance of the Senate chamber to the Democrats, or see more conflict and posturing from the GOP and another eventual budget fight. In Richland, we will either elect an incumbent woman of color or a man who has openly called for a replay of Kristallnacht, and who has a fraud conviction on his record. Countless school board seats, contests for port commissioners, city councils, and many other local government posts are the entry point for the next generation of Democrats. I know it can feel like an afterthought or a letdown, or small potatoes compared to the travesties we read about every day from so many news outlets.

But make no mistake, this is how political movements get started, for good or for ill. After all this is how extremism tunneled its way into Congress. These seemingly small levers of power are how To Kill a Mockingbird gets banned from school districts and how trans students get ordered to use the wrong rest room. This is how cities shut down effective programs to help people out of homelessness. This is how governments decide not to expand public transportation programs or continue segregationist zoning ordinances.

And all along, accountable and unaccountable politicians work their way up through increasingly influential offices until they are the people refusing to seat justices on the Supreme Court, or opening investigations into conspiracies against our fair elections. Voting matters.

I wasn’t always a voting zealot. I was a college student who came out as queer in 1990, who tried direct action like holding a bullhorn at the front doors of the Family Research Council in DC so I could tell the crowd exiting the nearby basketball game about their hurtful practices toward LGBT people. I “infiltrated” an ex-gay group hoping to learn their secrets, but apparently lipstick and earrings were not enough of a disguise to hide my lesbian-ness. In 2003 I came out as trans, and helped to found the DC Trans Coalition. Along with 20-some other trans and nonbinary people and allies, we flew under the radar of Congress to amend the District’s Human Rights Act to include transgender people, and then the real work began. Because just as the extreme right decries “regulations” as horrible inventions that hurt communities, it’s those regulations that give us safe milk to drink, clean air, overtime pay, accountable advertising (we’re coming for you, Facebook), and in DC, the most comprehensive, robust protections for transgender people in the entire country.

Even so, there are limits to regulations. They can be rolled back, reinterpreted, discarded, as we’ve seen this White House do everything it can to erase critical regulations in environmental policy, civil rights, immigration, and so many other areas of governance. I still love direct action. I will yell into a bullhorn whenever you need me to. But I have joined our state Democratic Party because I now understand the importance of legislation, and yes, so much of it happens at the local level, too.

We must elect progressive and even moderate voices to our government. We need young people to run for office so that they too will have the experience they need to run for Congress someday. We need to see women, people of color, LGBT candidates, not because we have some fetish for identity politics, but because Congress was designed to reflect our populace, and these communities have been sorely underserved for more than 240 years now. Vote, donate to the political organizations that are invested in your lives and your successes, and volunteer.

Vote, donate, volunteer. You’ve hopefully done the first already, you’re doing the second right now, and you can do the third so easily. It has been a painful year, I agree. Each one of us in this room deeply cares about democracy. I appreciate everything you’ve done for your neighbors, I was so honored to walk with you in the women’s march, also known as The Largest March Ever in Walla Walla. You still have great power. Because of all the calls and emails and in office visits we made to our representatives, the repeal of the ACA failed. Again and again it failed. You did that. We did that!

We can do it again. Don’t let people tell you Democrats can’t win elections out here. We can and we do. But remember: Vote, Donate, Volunteer. Say it with me! Vote, Donate, Volunteer.

I will never stop fighting. The Democratic Party will never stop fighting for you. Whether we are up against neo-fascist, wannabe authoritarian regimes in the White House or local candidates who lead with ignorance and hate, we will fight together for a better, fairer, more just community. Thank you for coming here today.

And vote, donate, and volunteer!

Jenna’s Rainstorm

I listened without amusement to the therapist’s clock. It was supposed to resemble an antique mantle clock, but the mahogany was a cheap veneer and the clock face was cardboard painted to look like mother of pearl, which of course, looked nothing the fuck like mother of pearl. His crappy clock sat on an actual white mantle, which was not a good match for the dark clock, come to think of it, and all of this was over an electronic fireplace with little orange pieces of fabric that “flickered” in the least convincing flamey way possible. Oh, but I was supposed to be totally authentic with him.

This was all bullshit.

Nobody even owned ticking clocks anymore. I’m sure when he checked the time it was using his FitBit. He must have read somewhere before he lost his hair and began his attempts to deceive his clients with clocks and combovers that crazy people need noise, all the time, or they’ll go even more insane. I’d rather have just sat in the quiet. I’d gone whole 50-minute sessions without speaking but then the good doctor just upped my dosage of whichever drug of the month was supposed to make me a more tolerant-of-bullshit person.

He tried to stifle a yawn, but I knew he was as bored as me. I’d burned twelve minutes ignoring him and his clock. I’d throw it in the fireplace but wasn’t a real fucking fireplace.

I sighed, shifting in my seat. At least the furniture in this room was comfortable, unlike the pissed-on, puke-stinking chairs in the patients’ lounge.

Finally he spoke. He couldn’t take it anymore. He probably loathed the mantle clock as much as I did.

“What is on your mind today?”

He was careful not to say my name because I might go off on him again.

I gave him a quick glance of eye contact and continued my boycott against words. Maybe I should talk. He already caved; I beat him for today. I don’t want to get in a power struggle with him, but what else do I have? They’re not giving me my freedom anytime soon.

I spoke up.

“On my mind today, on my mind, let me see…How about you let me walk out of here? I mean we’re not exactly getting anywhere, doctor, and I know I’m ready.” Try not to look too earnest. Make him think you’re not invested, Jenna. He was always trying to read me and I hated it. Nothing put me in a fit of mental gymnastics than trying to outthink his stupid interpretations.

“That’s great to hear. Why do you think you’re ready?”

Because I cannot play another fucking game of Connect Four with Spiegelman, you asshole, and because you’re keeping me from my freedom and my fucking self.

In general, I attempted to hold a hard line between my unadulterated thoughts and what I said to people because other people have no sense of humor and okay, I could be a little intense. But I had earned my intensity, damn it.

My thoughts spilled out of my mouth. He smiled because he’d gotten the truth out of me. I tried to calculate how much longer he thought I’d be in the ward. It would be that much more time until I could get back on hormones, reclaim my autonomy, live on my own. I tried not to show him how crushed I was for my lack of discipline.

“You could play a different game with him, Jinn,” he says. Now he thought he could throw my birth name around at me. That pissed me off. Royally. Queen-of-motherfucking-England-with-entitled-inbred-children pissed. He knew I didn’t go by that. He knew. He was trying to get to me.

All of his therapy certificates hung on the wall and I just knew his parents had paid off the schools. Outside his office, a patient I liked named Catherine was throwing a fit, so I started a countdown when the guards would be on her: in five, four, three, yup. A crash as she hit the floor, I didn’t even have to witness it because I’d seen it in action so many times. Then a hush and the whisper sound of her clothes sliding on the floor as they lifted her up. She must have been easy to carry; she was basically a skin bag of bones in a dirty flower print dress and fuzzy slippers that had lost their fuzz a decade ago.

“You know it’s not about the game, and you know that’s not the name I use,” I said, feeling defiant.

He looked at his clipboard, his pen poised to take notes but he never wrote anything down. I was sure that in graduate school he won a distinguished award in use of props.

“Transsexualism is very rare,” he said. I get it. I do. You think you can deny who I say I am and I’ll have some kind of breakdown. But it is who I am.

“Well, lucky you, then. And lucky, lucky me.”

“Have you thought about working through your anger, Jinn?”

Have I thought about splitting open a sack of entrails over your head and giving you a new hair style, why yes I have, actually. Good goddamn, Dr. Johnston.

“Have you thought that maybe I have something to be angry about?”

“What are you angry about?”

“I’m angry that I was attacked by my boyfriend but I’m the one in a mental ward.”

“Well, but he’s dead.”

“I should have just let him kill me, is that what you’re saying?”

“I don’t have an opinion on that. A court decided you were guilty of his death and a judge sentenced you to this institution to help you. But you are mired in your anger, still.”

“That is a curious rewriting of history, doctor. And the jury was set against me because they saw a gay relationship and they hated both of us for it. And as you already fucking know the prosecutor made me out to be some Transylvania Transvestite on a killing spree. I just need them to take my appeal and then hopefully I can get the hell out of here.”

He gave me a look that suggested my appeal would never happen. Does he know something I don’t? At trial I had a shitty public defender who was in way over her head. At least I found a couple of decent folks for my appeal, but the criminal justice system is in no hurry to liberate a Turkish trans woman with a big mouth and a short temper.

I got another question from him but I was done. As usual this had gone nowhere. Modern mantle clock showed three minutes left for our session. I stood up.

“I think we have a little time left.”

“Enjoy yourself,” I said, and I walked out to the lounge.

Today he didn’t ask me about my power. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or if I should be worried, like it didn’t matter to him what I believed.

Things were pretty much how I left them, save the absence of Catherine. Kyle and Marcy were weaving brown leather belts at a small plastic table that I hated because one of the legs was uneven so it was always tipping back and forth at the slightest touch. Jonas was zoned out watching Doc McStuffins—I didn’t judge, I’d lost myself in that show, too, because it is awesome—because he said it’s the only thing they put on in here that had any Black people in it. There was some new person on the ward, a physics professor, or so I’d heard, reading a stack of books on the couch under the picture window; the story went that he had a nervous breakdown in the middle of a lecture, and started asking his students to get the roaches off of him. Most of us in here also had broken some law, so I wondered if he took out any students in the process, or if the snobby trustees at the university were just too uncomfortable to let him try outpatient therapy. I’d tried to talk to him once or twice but he couldn’t get out of his books, his fuzzy eyebrows fluttering about like anxious butterflies. Other people were here for a little while and then gone, on short three-day holds or a two-week stay until they reached a therapeutic dose of their antidepressant before they’d be sent home. They weren’t even worth talking to if you were a long-timer like me. It would be like naming a livestock animal that will eventually be sent away to the slaughterhouse. Don’t get vulnerable or you’ll be vulnerable, duh.

But in the room I saw a brand-new, hot off the presses new person, talking to the charge nurse. We didn’t usually talk to Nurse Freida because she didn’t allow it. I looked for a visitor or employee badge on his chest, and then I realized that he was one of us on the ward. He was chubby, with a goatee that was going to look pretty overgrown in a few days, and he was smiling. Like, not fake smiling. This intrigued me, as did his pretty little hands. A shot bounced around my head—what if he’s trans? I guessed he stood at about five-seven. I shuffled a little closer, pretending to be interested in the magazine rack because OMG what could People have in it this week that I suddenly need to read—and try to hear his voice. Is it froggy trans guy voice?

I don’t think I’ve ever been this excited to maybe meet a transmasculine dude, ever, but in this cesspool I was willing to give it a shot. Hopefully he wouldn’t be one of those “You don’t understand the lesbian community like I do” assholes.

I couldn’t quite hear him, so I gave up all pretense and walked up to him and the nurse.

“Hi, I’m Jenna,” I said, sticking my hand out at him. Information retreival in action.

“I’m Thomas,” he said, shaking my hand. Firm grip, not mushy or clammy. Eight points out of ten on the greeting. Voice was in the male range but not anywhere approaching deep bass. I decided on the spot that he was definitely trans.

Nurse Frieda was not messing around with me, though.

“Jinn, do you need something?”

“Just saying hello. I’m enacting good social skills, I thought you liked that sort of thing.”

Thomas cracked another smile. I was going to like this guy. We could be besties.

Nurse Frieda took a half step toward me, cutting me off from the newbie.

“I appreciate that. You can speak to him later. Thank you.”

“Enjoy Nurse Frieda while you can,” I said, walking away.

I headed back to my room and flopped on my bed, which rattled and clanged in protest. I shared a room with Kyle, and fortunately we were both pretty tidy. Under my mattress I kept my journal, which I had to encode otherwise Doctor Shithead would read it and use it against me. I was working up a spell to break out of here, and after careful thought and consideration had decided that a flood would be my best option. I stared at the ceiling tiles for a quick minute, then dug the book out from my bed. Trapped in its pages was a contraband pencil. I should have hidden the pencil somewhere else but then it’s not convenient for me to write in the journal when I had the time. And all they could do is take it from me.

I curled up in the corner of my mattress, leaning against the wall, and then I pulled out a magazine article from Time that I snagged earlier this morning. The staff never noticed because they cut out the pieces they think we can’t handle, but nobody documents which pages are gone and which should be there. If they were gonna be nazis about our reading they should at least notate shit like the third reich did. Amateurs.

This article about wiccans and Stonehenge was, I decided, the last piece I needed for my spell, though of course I did require a few physical objects to make the spell happen. But I’d figured out where to get those, it was the chant that I’d had trouble with so far.

I read the article carefully, circling a few words in the piece that made their own secret sentence only I could unscramble.

I began writing. I could taste the anticipation of breaking out later that night.

Third letter, first letter, second, fourth, fifth, then repeat for each word I wrote down. Second line, reverse. Third line, backwards and skip every other letter, then I wrote them at the end, which was the front. Done.

I sat up straighter, looking at my spell. I flipped the pencil over in my fingers, a little memory of second grade coursing through me when I first learned pencil finger tricks, and I smiled. I’d be ready tonight. I’d have to do it before the room doors locked at 9:00 PM, which would give me two and a half hours after dinner finished.

I can do it.

I put the pencil in a long horizontal gap behind the baseboard under my bed, and I slipped the journal into my pillowcase. Lunch would start soon so I’d be locked out of my room. Venturing back into the lounge/nonlounge I saw that all of my ward mates had latched onto Thomas like leeches in a warm pond. He looked overwhelmed.

“Back off, back off, honestly, give a man some space,” I said, pulling him away toward the French doors that led to the garden outside. It was a pretty day—bright, light green new growth on the hedge, two squirrels chittering over an acorn. A few wispy clouds cruised high in the sky.

I released him after I’d gotten us away from the swarm.

“There you go,” I said.

“Thanks,” he said. He’d felt very soft under his summer weight chartreuse sweater and I thought that if he was on testosterone, it wasn’t working very well for him.

“So what brings you here?” I asked like I was some kind of entertainment director. I could point him to all of the wonderful amenities here, like the painstakingly laid black and white tile floor, or the mysterious sack of leather belt pieces, ready for weaving whenever the urge struck. Or perhaps he’d be interested in the classic children’s literature section of the book shelf, with any and all swear words meticulously blackened out by the staff. I awaited his answer.

“I tried to kill myself.”

“Well, you didn’t manage it, I suppose.”

“I suppose not.”

“Well good. Did you try to kill yourself because you’re trans?”

“Because I’m what?”

Benny, one of the orderlies, ushered him away and made a face at me.

“Thomas, have a seat over here. Jinn is a good guy but he doesn’t always understand when he’s hurting somebody’s feelings.”

“I’m not a guy,” I yelled over to Benny. “Good greased pig don’t make me wipe you out in my flood, Benny.”

Benny helped Thomas sit down and then came over to me.

“Don’t wipe me out in your flood, please.”

I told him I’d consider it. Overall I liked Benny but he was a bit of a nervous mother hen. Lots of puffy fluttering over nothing.

By lunchtime fat clouds had rolled in. It was fine by me if everyone thought I was a joke, that this was a regular layer of cumulous cover. I knew it was final preparation for my spell. I suffered through an hour of group therapy, trying not to make eye contact with Spiegelman lest he sucker me into a game of Connect Four before dinner. I couldn’t say no to him and I didn’t know why. Maybe it was because he wore a series of homemade knit sweater vests with reindeer or bunnies or moose on them. What did a man like that have to look forward to?

Thomas didn’t say much in the group—it was standard practice to leave newbs alone the first few sessions of group. I listened to Kyle moan on and on about his abusive father and permissive mother. Marcy twirled her auburn hair and talked about never wanting to leave the security of this place. I couldn’t comprehend how she could feel that way. Catherine was back among us, looking hollowed out from earlier, saying she was plain numb. I wanted to give her a hug. Catherine never got any visitors, like me.

Maybe Thomas wasn’t trans, I thought, which was a disappointment and a little bit of a relief. Then a roll of thunder cracked above us. It was my signal, and the end of group. We were dismissed by the social worker, a lovely woman with the unfortunate name of Henrietta.

I dashed back to my room and ripped the spell out of my journal. I was ready, so ready.

Lightning brightened the air for a second and the next clap of thunder echoed through the room. Two people shrieked; even the nurses on shift looked a little nervous.

I walked to the French doors, which had started clattering in the push pull of the wind.

“I call to my sisters, my ancestors, my goddesses,” I said.

“Jinn, settle down,” said Benny.

“I call to my mother and her mother and the mother before her.”

I didn’t really need my piece of paper. I could feel the magic swarming around my fingers and palms.

“Jinn, you need to calm down and come over here,” said Nurse Frieda in her most authoritative voice.

“I call on the waters of the earth to cleanse this space. I call on the movement of the air to purify and rush in. Take down the gates, take down the doors, take down the devils that bind us.”

“We need to sedate him,” I heard the nurse say. I needed to finish my spell before they could pierce me.

“I call upon the waters and the women from before me to release me, release us, with my life I pray, bring yourselves upon us.”

The doors flew open, pushed aside by a rolling wave that covered the dingy tile, rolled over the furniture, swept away the staff, lifting them off their feet and rolling them over in somersaults, back to the far end of the ward. But the water didn’t knock me down, even though it was past my knees. And it didn’t chill me, even though I could tell it was frigid. I looked back and saw the other patients in a corner of the room, with Jonah in front holding back the tide. I’d always guessed he had some magic in him.

I strode into the dark outside, feeling the spray of the rain on my face, and although nobody could hear me over the storm, I knew what I’d said.

I am out of here, motherfuckers.

 

THE END

 

Trans & Gender Nonconforming Reading: Moderator Notes on Trans Literature

[image error]NOTE: These remarks were delivered at AWP17 on February 11, 2017 in Washington, DC.

People ask, “What is trans literature? Is it literature about trans people or by trans people? Is it emerging? Is it literary or folk? Is it in vogue or invisible? Is it limited to a form or a genre or is it a post-modern queering of narrative?”

These questions miss the point. Further, this questioning enforces an authenticity of the poetic and the literary not demanded of cis writers or cis-centered literature. As many writers on the margins have pointed out, as Dr. Nafisi said to us Thursday night in her stunning rebuke of tyrannical, Western cultural norms that seek to delegitimize Iranian cultural production and cultural identity, the mainstream ideology never seeks its own authenticity, it can only, in a kind of Freudian compulsive repetition, work to pull down the provenance of marginalized literatures. Mainstream literary ideals continually misunderstand the value, the meaning, the quality, and the scope of trans literature.

Just last week the White House and its team of dementors and destructors floated language for a new executive order that would erase the legal foundation for trans civil rights in America. This horrendous mashup of reactionary illegal-ese written in the dungeons of the Family Research Council and the Heritage Foundation, if signed by President Hairdemort, would define for the first time, by any government in the world, that “sex is an immutable characteristic from birth.” At the exact moment that the United States is pondering the erasure of trans and gender nonconforming people from the legal landscape, we are facing an ongoing question in the literary world: “What is trans literature?”

Another way for the trans writer to interpret this question is: who are you that you think you have an entire literature? Or: I have no idea what trans literature is, and I am unable to research this question on my own, and I’m sure you have a ready answer for me so please do my labor and educate me.

Trans literature, since we’re discussing it, is not here for the cis gaze. Trans literature may in fact be unintelligible to a mainstream audience. Trans literature can and does rely on nuance, lived experience, a trans imagination not necessarily translatable for people who have never torn themselves apart and reassessed their relationship to their gender. Trans people are called liars, engaged in “cloak and dagger” machinations, as my spouse’s colleague, a political theorist, once ascribed to me.

Trans literature is a lie just like all literature is a lie, in that they are both inventions presented as real, and trans literature is a retelling of the lies we learned at a tender age and then identified as falsehoods, and then pushed against in a search for our lowercase T truth. Trans literature is a truth, just like all literature is a truth, and an exploration of the devastation of relativity to truth as it is encountered by human beings in discrete particular moments and situational contexts.

Trans literature picks up the tropes from other literary voices and traditions, pulls in silenced narratives and opens a light onto them so we can visualize those stories in a new way. Trans literature uses cultural forms (so well described in yesterday’s queer folk forms panel), and chafes against standard expectations for poem and prose. Trans literature casts a different imaginary, reinvents tired tropes to create a new mythology opposed to colonialist appropriation of The Other, pulls apart the concepts of static identity, the natural, the patriotic, the dead dichotomy of pure versus perverted.

Trans literature is not new; you just haven’t noticed it. Trans literature is not chic; it’s just unfamiliar to you. Trans literature is not cool; okay, maybe it’s a little bit cool.

Each of these writers, contributors to a broad trans literary project, is doing something critical and fascinating. I ask you to search in your own way for what those nuances are.

Getting Past the Noise and on to the Resistance

AUTHOR’S NOTE: This was originally posted to my Facebook page.

To resist, we have to get over a few narratives that American neoliberalism and reactionaries have handed to us. Namely:

1. The idea of scarcity—that there is only so much energy to use in resistance, or that there are only so many opportunities for resistance, so we need to all agree on how to approach an action or campaign. This just isn’t true. AIDS activists didn’t move the NIH, FDA, White House, and general public on their cause by all working in lockstep to do the same thing, and they didn’t have only 1986 to do it. The ceaseless march of protests, the myriad of forms of resistance that included direct action, lobbying, negotiation, public relations campaigns, research, and so on, and that extended for more than a decade brought about change. In just three days of his presidency, Trump has seen leakers, philosophical arguments waged online, editorials from the press, rogue federal employees, and the largest global demonstration in history. There is enough room for all of us.

2. The idea of exceptionalism—it sounds trite, but ordinary people can make extraordinary change. We are already in an amazing time where humans have extended their life expectancies, where we have cures for dozens of diseases that used to kill millions of people every year, where we can travel around the planet in mere hours, and where we can harness the clean energy of the sun at ever-increasing efficiency. Social progress has moved quickly, too, where only 1.5 years ago we saw marriage equality, 50 years ago we saw the end of the ban on interracial marriage, only 97 years ago came the right of women to vote, and only 117 years since women could own property. Just in my lifetime we have moved from an absolute erasure of trans lives to near-universal acceptance (the millennials are working as hard as they can on this). Although lived experience feels different from abstractly tallying these forces and changes, the reality is that we didn’t need exceptional people to bring them about. We needed a mass of people to cause a tipping point. Each of us is capable of calling for and receiving productive change in our communities.

3. The idea of purity—there is a reason so many people throw around the word hypocrite, because it is easy to accuse imperfect people of imperfection. None of us adhere perfectly to a philosophy, and none of us should be dismissed out of hand when we contradict ourselves. Certainly the consequences of our words and actions are subject to thoughtful critique, as they should be. But puritanical thinking relies on another false premise, that things are simple. Nothing we humans have created over millennia, like our political and governmental systems, are simple. We need to step away from the call out, shunning, dismissive practice that limits the relationships we need more than ever to actively resist this government. We need not call people out in open forums, certainly not before we have approached them directly in a way that opens up communication and the possibility of accountable change.

I keep saying it’s going to get bad, and I mean it. It will probably get worse than I envision, because I am an optimist, even in trying times. I told my mother today that I am trying to face into the wind and take it on. But a number of conversations I’ve witnessed in the last two weeks concern me that we are caught up on all of the above, and if we stay there we will not effectively be able to help each other.

One Little Week in Issues

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, from Wikimedia under a reuse license.

We began this week with the now-usual, unhelpful conversation about whether Donald Trump is a jerk for going on about a former Miss Universe and her weight and ethnicity. Lost in the noise around Alicia Machado’s value as a human being (Mary Matalin called her a “tart”), was the leering, grotesque womanizing personality of Trump, which Hillary Clinton framed for 100 million Americans in the first debate when she said:

And one of the worst things he said was about a woman in a beauty contest. He loves beauty contests, supporting them and hanging around them. And he called they woman “Ms. Piggy.” Then he called her “Ms. Housekeeping,” because she was Latina. Donald, she has a name.

This caught Trump off guard because how could it not? For a man who lies multiple times every minute, who plays domination games as constantly as he fills his lungs with air, these kinds of accusations are lost in the supreme catastrophic wake of his life. What woman hasn’t Trump directed a hostile, predatory, or sexist remark? What Latinx person has not brought forth a comment about Mexico, especially after he used them in declaring his candidacy? To be Trump is to force the world into his matrix of understanding, which is narrower than the eye of a needle—are they with me or against me? Do I want to be like them or can I mock them?

We have watched sixteen months of Donald Trump do his best presidential act, which from the sum of his words, behaviors, and responses to pressure, he thinks is some kind of caricature of strength and showmanship. That the President should also be diplomatic is to be weak; to be fair-minded is to be “low energy,” to be concerned for all Americans is to be establishment; to be open to compromise is to be “politics as usual.” Trump’s own rhetoric has painted him into a corner on nearly every domestic and foreign policy issue, and along with it, he has dragged the Jekyll/Hyde Republican Party with him. Unless voters want to flip off the other 192 UN member states and any American who thinks that Trump is a fool, most people have decided to stay out of the corner. There are now very few people willing to vote for Trump who aren’t motivated to vote out of ideology.

For the Trump train, however, this week has demonstrated that the offensive statements he has made have had real effects, not just on the electorate, but on attitudes among Americans and on the boundaries of communication over issues, as well as violent forms of communication. Take this harrowing account from a journalist who was barraged by Trump supporters, one of whom even tried to induce a seizure:

The video was some sort of strobe light, with flashing circles and images of Pepe [the frog] flying toward the screen. It’s what’s called epileptogenic—something that triggers seizures. Fortunately, since I was standing, I simply dropped my iPad to the ground the second I realized what Mike had done. It landed face down on the bathroom floor.

The racist tweetstorm unleashed against Leslie Jones, simply for starring in a redux of Ghostbusters that featured women instead of men in the lead roles, is hard to imagine without the animus whipped up against women and people of color that takes place at nearly every Trump rally. I wrote for Bitch Media earlier this year that his criticisms of Clinton far surpassed critiques of her policy stances and voting history and plummeted into outright harassment, if not incitement to commit homicide. Caught up in the hostilities at his rallies and among his supporters are fears around terrorism that the alt-right insists on linking to Muslims (while turning a blind eye to white nationalism), on fears about immigrants, foreign nations’ presumed stealing of our factories and jobs, Black rioters and looters who hate the police, immoral queer people who have desecrated marriage, and trans women who make all of our toilets unsafe.

The incessant sound bites, the trance journalism pieces that can’t seem to replay every awful, careless thought out of Trump’s mind has generated this national shitstorm, and so it is a little bit surprising that the latest revelation on Friday, that Trump bragged with Billy Bush about harassing and sexually assaulting women because he knew he could get away with it, would shock the GOP establishment enough to warrant a tide of unendorsement and condemnation. Among the exiters are politicians who voted to defund Planned Parenthood, who sponsored or backed so-called “bathroom bills,” who refused Syrian refugees refuge in their state or who publicly wondered if refugees would harbor terrorists, who reject even the idea that Black Lives Matter, and who had until Friday excused Trump’s statements and antics. Some political analysts have concluded that because Trump’s poll numbers were already weak and because the GOP can’t win any of its major races without white women voting in large numbers, that the better strategy was disentanglement with the standard-bearer than to continue anemic support.

So here we are, a few hours from the second presidential debate in which the candidates will be answering questions directly from citizens, the people who give them or refuse them this highest executive office. It is one of now few remaining political taboos standing — never to be disrespectful to a voter, especially in a public forum. One hundred million people watched the first debate and with this newest scandal swirling around Trump like his own personal Category 5 hurricane, from which he is sure to be defensive and looking for a bare-knuckled fight with Clinton, viewership is expected to be high again. Will Trump be able to hold it together when in the first few minutes this tape is brought up? I don’t own a magic 8 ball anymore but signs point to no.

This election has seen the worst in people—the GOP’s dystopian vision of a crumbling America, the knee-jerk reactions against Muslim people every time ISIS (not an organization run by observant Muslims) claims another attack, the violence online and in person against supporters of candidates other than Trump, and just all the yelling—it is such uncharted territory one wonders how much worse things can get in the next scant month before Election Day.

But hell, imagine it if Trump gets elected. We may look back on this week and say, wow, that’s when the campaign really shifted. Or it may be the beginning of four years of political, economic, and cultural garbage.

Here There Be Puppets: My Experience as a Delegate to the 2016 Washington State Democratic Convention

I have voted in every election since I came of age in 1988, with one exception in 1989 because I didn’t file for my absentee ballot by the deadline and I couldn’t vote in New York State as a college student. I’d never really considered myself very into the Democratic Party per se, but I’ve voted for progressive and left-of-center candidates my whole adulthood. I can’t say I have a primary issue because in my mind they all vie for attention—reproductive rights are very important to me, but so is ending the death penalty (if I’m being honest I’m a prison abolitionist but there are no candidates calling for that), and so are trans civil and human rights, and then I’d really like to see a sea change on green energy investment. See what I did there? I hate the welfare reform passed in 1996, I hate the 1994 crime bill, and I think the Affordable Care Act fell far short of what we need for all humans in the United States to access the care we need, no matter our legal status or which identity categories apply to us. Friends have said I am “left of Chairman Mao,” and thus I recognize that I do not fully fit into any party’s platform.

This year I decided to take the plunge and see what immersing myself into the Democratic Party would be like. I wasn’t excited because of the ruckus between the Clinton and Sanders camps, but I did support Hillary in 2008 and I did have to come around to Barack Obama, who has both delighted and significantly disappointed me (23,000 drone bombs just last year) since then. Still, I can remember needing to suck it up when Clinton conceded in 2008 and so I can sympathize with Sanders supporters now. It’s a difficult space in which to exist, especially after a primary as painful as this one has been. I’m ready to move on from the “Berners are all sexists” and the “Clinton supporters are not real progressives” reductivism of the past several months.

I went into the precinct caucus with real excitement that was quieted as it became clear that I was in a distinct minority. I was the tally man, so I saw the votes get counted by friends who still didn’t trust me completely not to try to throw the results. I went to the county caucus and was excited to be elected to the congressional district caucus and the state convention. I could be a part of an historic election. So what if the air conditioner busted in the CD caucus and we had to do our business in a humid, mold-smelling cafeteria? I was excited to travel to Tacoma for the state convention and get to work on the platform and resolutions. I’d even written a resolution and sent it to my legislative district committee to see if they would push it forward to the convention.

Friday went reasonably well; I spent most of the afternoon in the Stonewall Democrats caucus, the caucus for LGBTQI members of the party. The caucus was taken up with elections for the chair and board, as the organization had been inactive for some time. I was happy to see several other trans and nonbinary people in the room, but when the newly elected chair said he expected five hours of work a week, I shook my head. I thought: that would have to come out of my sleep time, because I have nothing left in my schedule. I shook a few hands but didn’t come away feeling like I’d had an opportunity to meet anyone.

Maybe I should have paid for the Friday night dinner or Saturday morning breakfast, but I wanted to spend at least a little time with the boys and Susanne. Maybe it made me a little more isolated, but I did get to talk to a few folks from my corner of the room (we were seated by county).

What was initial excitement at walking into the ballroom organized by county faded quickly as the proceedings got underway. It was clear that some of the Sanders delegates wanted to obstruct the process—I’d prepared myself for battles on resolutions and platform changes around superdelegates and open primaries, but instead the arguments regarded minutia over the operating rules for the convention. These are temporary rules that are taken up after electing a temporary chair for the convention—just the rules we’ll use to do the work of updates to the charter, platform, and resolutions to bring to the national convention. Some Sanders supporters were riled even at the keynote speaker, Sanders endorser Senator Merkley of Oregon, when he said it was time to unify behind Hillary Clinton to defeat Donald Trump. He was booed from all corners of the room, and five people in the front row stood up and turned their backs on him, saying “Bernie or bust!”

After the points of information, points of order, arguments for and against changes to clauses, we were past 11:00AM. We had to be done at 7:00PM. Next up were elections for presidential electors, otherwise known as the Electoral College. These individuals were running simply to sign their names in Olympia in the middle of December to make the Electoral College votes for the President-Elect, should the Democratic candidate win the general election. This simple process turned into a circus. A man named Andrew Dial stood up at one of two microphones on the floor and said he was excited to vote for Hillary Clinton as the elector because he loves war criminals and he wants endless fracking across America. Some people cheered him; others booed. Delegates asked no fewer than five times what we were voting for. The fifth time this came up the exasperated temporary chair, Noel Frame, said she would no longer answer the question.

We broke for lunch at 12:35, half an hour late. One delegate passed out and had to be revived. I walked a couple of blocks to a Mexican restaurant and ate by myself; I didn’t know but one or two people at the convention, and even for an extrovert like me, I needed a little space. I wolfed down a beef enchilada and headed back to the floor. On the last block the skies unleashed thick pellets of rain and hail; actual waves rolled down the street toward the convention center. My boater had did the best it could to keep me dry.

Back on the floor, back to presidential elector nominations. Some of the people nominating themselves for elector disrespected the office. One woman told us she would never vote for Hillary Clinton and would be happy to pay the $1,000 fine. So millions of people’s votes aren’t as important to her as her own opinion? She wound up not getting elected. Neither did the woman who said she was Native American in spirit but not by blood. Also neither did the man who didn’t believe in the Electoral College. No matter our candidate of choice, the delegate body did seem to want people who would be respectful of their role as the electors for the state if the Democratic candidate won in the general election.

This state convention has held out against making presidential endorsements, that is, until this year. On a campaign loyal vote, Sanders delegates pushed through an endorsement of Bernie Sanders, then complained into the microphone that the endorsement should have read Senator Bernie Sanders. The next vote was for an endorsement of both Sanders and Hillary Clinton. That one failed. We were now running past 2:00PM with no agreement yet on the rules for the proceedings. We would not have much time for the charter, platform, or resolutions. I’d read through all of the language up for these various votes and had my ideas about which ways I’d vote. There were two charter amendments to make the party more trans-inclusive. My resolution about the transphobic ballot initiative 1515 wasn’t listed, but three other similar ones were. There were resolutions about supporting Muslim Americans and protecting the environment of Washington State, about minimum wage, all the sorts of things democrats have argued about this primary season. I was glad to see them. When I’d read the file at 3AM a couple of nights earlier, I was excited to do this work. This is why my friends and colleagues in Walla Walla had sent me to Tacoma.

We got to barely any of that. After 4:00PM we finally had our presidential electors chosen.  Three hours to go. I was beyond frustrated. I turned to the man sitting next to me, a Sanders delegate, and said, “If I had a dollar for every time someone said ‘point of information,’ I wouldn’t need my day job.” He sighed at me. “They need to move on,” he said, shaking his head.

Finally Noel Frame our chair brought us to the charter amendments. These require a majority of the elected delegates, or the 1,400 people elected at the earlier caucuses to come to the convention in Tacoma. Of that 1,400 we had 290 Clinton and 1,110 Sanders delegates, but the initial credentials committee which counts how many people actually show up noted that there were 591 Sanders and 232 Clinton delegates present, giving us a total count of 823 delegates. A few more people showed up by the time the final credentials were reported at 2:30, but we were still short of 1,000 people. It would be hard to draw more than 700 to make a majority for any vote.

We passed the gender inclusivity charter amendment for elections to the central committee for the state by 23 votes. These were counted by hand as tally committee members walked around, pointing at each person who’d raised their credential in the air. One person spoke into a mic after the vote was announced, saying that the writer of the amendment was one of the tallying crew. The chair gaveled her down, and instructed the tally committee from then on to recuse themselves if they were also an author of a given referendum or amendment.

Next up was gender inclusivity for all other elected positions, including delegates at the caucus and conventions. This is where things fell apart around the party’s commitment to trans people, and where I found the process was not supportive enough of identifying which voices should be given space in the pro/against arguments.

“I’ll take an argument against the amendment,” said the chair. The first argument presented was that such a new rule could stifle women’s equality in representation. My neck turned red. I knew where such arguments came from, and I was irritated to see them play out in the party. The speaker also thought the wording wasn’t good enough, whatever that meant. A speaker for the amendment went next, and as it dawned on me that this would be a good time to get to the microphone, the following speaker against opened his mouth.

“It seems to easy to abuse this rule,” he said, as if he’d thought about this issue for precisely the last seven seconds. “What’s to stop a man from putting on a dress and running as a woman?”

I think I actually gasped. Two Sanders supporters who’d been playing cribbage two rows ahead of me who I’d been chatting with all day turned to look at me. They looked afraid of me.

I raced to the microphone, which was nowhere near me as the Walla Walla folks were at the far edge of the ballroom and the mics were in the middle of the space.

I tried to come up with some rationale to be able to speak. Point of information — no. Point of order — nope. I thought about saying “point of privilege” and then saying I was aggrieved as a transgender human at the thought that my gender identity was superfluous or a pretense, but I didn’t want to alienate any delegates into changing their votes before they’d been cast. I looked around at the half dozen other transgender people — all women or nonbinary — that I’d met that weekend. Everyone looked as stunned as me.

Let me be clear: The “man in a dress” concept is phony. It’s not real. Nobody except Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho as played in 1961 by Anthony Perkins does this. It has never happened that a man who identifies as male has donned female-coded apparel in order to run as a delegate, assault cis women in public rest rooms, or enacted violence or privilege on anyone. Men have the capability to commit violence just fine without dresses. In fact probably the last thing a man of any stripe should do if he wants to be treated with respect or authority is wear a dress. It is the transmisogynist’s rationale for enacting violence against trans women. It has no value in a debate of any kind. It is like saying “trans people are crazy.”

So I stood there and I watched the vote fail. After the tally we had 674 for the amendment. I was livid.

The chair then told us that we should congratulate ourselves on passing even one of the votes. This did not encourage me. It is only because I changed my legal status that I can run as a male, and that’s okay with my state party?

I sighed. I felt like crying. I looked up at the podium and I said, “It’s not good enough.” I found one of the trans women I’d met back at the congressional district caucus in Spokane, and we hugged each other. I wasn’t sure which of us was comforting whom. We pulled apart.

“I want to punch him in the face so bad,” she said, gritting her teeth.

“I do too,” I said. At that moment it didn’t matter which candidate we’d backed, since she was a Sanders delegate and I a Clinton delegate. It mattered that we were trans people. No matter what space we occupy or how much we try to engage in progressive institutions we will still find ourselves pushed into the box of other people’s misunderstandings. And let me be clear, this was a failure of understanding among both sets of supporters, across campaign lines. Simply not enough people supported us as transgender colleagues and party members.

I went back to my seat and sat down, not listening to the next piece of work we had to do. It was past 5:30PM and we were running out of time for the platform and resolutions debates. I let go of the idea that I would get to participate in a productive process; it took a down vote on transgender Democrats to make me see that such hope had been lost hours earlier.

My phone died and I was grateful. I plugged it into the wall of the ballroom and stood on the side for a while. My Walla Walla colleagues took glances at me to check in on my mood. I consoled myself that every organization has its limitations. Literally no one had pushed the party this hard on transgender inclusion before, I figured. So I would stick around to keep pushing.

We voted on the entire platform recommendations and passed them without any discussion. Next we voted on all of the “do pass” recommendations to the resolutions, again with next to no discussion or debate. The convention staff began disassembling our county markers even as we went through the motions of counting votes. The chair adjourned us at 7:21PM.

I texted Susanne that I was free from duty, so we met up at the hotel and walked to a local restaurant. It was so nice to see the boys, who were oblivious to the strife in the world—so far, anyway. We ordered pizza and while we waited four Sanders supporters sat at the next table. They went on to discuss why they’d voted against the charter amendment. “I mean, what if someone is asexual,” one of them asked in that completely uninformed mansplainy way, “do they just get to run for whatever gender?”

I inhaled. I held my breath. I looked over at Emile and Lucas and their sweet smiles and banter. Susanne caught my eye, listened to the men for another thirty seconds, and nodded at me.

“I am this close to getting out of my chair,” she said.

For the record, you do not want to piss off a certain 5’0″ Canadian queer woman because she is smarter than you and she will let you have it. I gestured at our children because they don’t need to see us reading the riot act at anyone.

We went back to the hotel room with literally two boxes of leftover pizza and I played puzzle games on my tablet until I couldn’t stay awake any longer.

And there was a whole additional day of convention stuff ahead of me.

Sunday was better, thank goodness.