Everett Maroon's Blog, page 23

Excerpt from Dragon Angst

From time to time I’ve posted excerpts from my works-in-progress. I did several for Parallax, now called The Unintentional Time Traveler. Here’s one from my very latest project, about a world in which teenagers reach adulthood via a fantastic metamorphosis. Don’t look for perfect writing, as I’m still in first draft mode. But to see where I’m going with this project, here is a brief scene from early on:

Hold on, hold on, I told myself. I had a searing need to flap my arms, or wings, or whatever protruded out from my shoulders. Me, I was me, I needed to remember. Hannah Pace, that’s me. I live at 31927 Carousel Boulevard. My cat is Mr. Stinkers, named when I was little. I’m smart and not very pretty, and not sure I want to be, anyway.

Forget pretty, I’m some kind of small dragon now.

I gave in to the urge to shake myself out, and amniotic fluid exploded off of me, landing on the ceiling, desk, and my True Blood poster. Dad would not like this, me having my meta without anyone around, but I didn’t feel particularly eggish the night before, so I gave myself a pass.

Broad wings, from the look of them. I turned to look at myself in the full-length mirror, but either my eyes were still adjusting or I’d gotten fluid on the glass, because all I could discern was a long streak of red. Maybe a big spike at the end of my tail. Seeing that, I remembered Dr. Hendrix’s class. Only practice moving in a safe environment. Ask for help. Stay grounded. Grounded.

With wings, could I fly? This was way better than a silly star phoenix, with all that burning that just made a mess.

I opened my mouth and roared, fighting a deep need to blow fire across the room.

I couldn’t wait to show Gabby and Jeff.

I wouldn’t get the chance. In an instant my movements were difficult to sustain, as if I were attempting to move through thick, clear liquid. It dawned on me that time had slowed down, a lot actually. It wasn’t possible, was it? I must have been hallucinating. Maybe first metas did that to people, but I couldn’t remember Dr. Hendrix ever saying such a thing to us.

More than the sluggishness around me, though, was the glimmer around my bedroom window. The sill, frame, and glass began to melt away, becoming transparent, leaving a rectangular hole in the wall and letting all of the cool night air to waft over to me. I’d have expected to get goose bumps, but my dragon skin seemed to need no defense against the shift in temperature.

I felt a sudden urge to leap through the opening, and as I was coiling my leg muscles to spring me off of the bed, I heard a voice, only in my head: You know where to go. Fly, little dragon.

This should have concerned me, as I’d never been one for imaginary voices. And still I crouched, then jumped, then flew, the air becoming cooler as I beat the last of the goo off my wings and bobbed away. We weren’t taught to leap off into the sky, so what was I doing? I wanted to worry about where I was going, why the window disappeared, and who was inside my head, but the process of feeling concern seemed as stuck as time had just a moment ago. Fifty beats of my wings into the flight I started to get the hang of defying gravity. I’d leveled off, and with only a vague sense of where I should head, decided it was time to take in the view.

I’d heard about airplanes, of course, but I’d never been inside one because my parents liked to keep their feet on the ground. The world looked so small to me, as if I’d left it behind and wasn’t zooming above it, just out of reach. With the slightest change in how I held my tail, I could dip and roll side over side. I cut through the wind like a bullet. A dragon bullet, that was me now.

From inside my chest, I felt two hearts thumping away. I must be dreaming, I thought. I couldn’t have anything this incredible happen in my actual life. Any minute now I would wake up…

Then I saw it and knew at once that this was my destination. On the rear side of the mountain that stood over our village, the part our town elders told us was impassible and tormented by constant blizzards, a small house with a thatched roof and a thin stream of firewood smoke drifting from the chimney. I circled, wondering how it was that I landed, and without a second guess, I leaned back and beat my wings behind me, setting my feet gingerly on the lawn in the front yard. My hind claws sank into the grass, and I stood there, seized to the earth. I was still rocking one leg free when a small man came out from the house.

He was bundled head to toe in small swatches of fur, as if a hundred squirrels had died for the cause of this one slipshod winter coat. Either my sense of smell had improved in dragon state or he was particularly smelly, but I covered my snout with one wing, and he was still 50 feet away from me. At my attempt to shield myself from his stink, he frowned.

“Over here,” he said in a deep voice. I figured he was talking to me, but before I could see where he meant, three more people came outside to the lawn. One of them was Dr. Hendrix. I would have smiled to see her, except I couldn’t summon my cheeks to rise.

“Hannah,” she said, still walking toward me. Assessing me, maybe. I supposed I was small for a dragon because I’d fit inside my bedroom earlier, but now it looked like I’d grown during my flight over here. In art class we’d learned about forced perspective, where the sizes of things are really optical illusions. Gabby and I had spent an hour trying to line ourselves up so it could look like she was a ballerina twirling on my hand, but we never got the angles precisely right. So I imagined that this house just seemed too small to me. As Dr. Hendrix walked up to me, however, I realized I had multiplied in volume.

“Drink this,” she said, setting down a large pail of blue liquid that looked like window cleaner. I cocked my head to one side hoping it was the international sign for double checking.

Dr. Hendrix nodded. She had wrinkles on the sides of her face that had come early to her life. I couldn’t remember a time when I’d seen her smile, but I’d also never known her to lie to anyone. I plunged into the metal bucket and inhaled the drink. And coughed because drinking wasn’t coming naturally to me, and now my lungs were unhappy with me. Fire billowed up my throat and streaked across the snow-covered field, igniting a small, dry bush. Oops.

Fortunate for the thatched roof house, which would probably ignite like a book of matches, Dr. Hendrix’s drink knocked me out cold. The last thing I remember is the smell of burning shrubbery.

Endangered Plot Devices

Reblogged from I Fry Mine In Butter:

Several months ago, Fry Butter took on the idea of “endangered sounds,” like the specific tone of a Ma Bell telephone ringing. What’s that, today’s Z Generation and Millennials ask, people didn’t always answer to Pokerface or some 8-second mosquito-pitched sound? Not only that, kids, once upon a time people had to go to the one house on the block wealthy enough to have a phone.

Read more… 687 more words

One of my favorite articles for I Fry Mine in Butter, the pop culture blog I wrote for last year.

Singing the Body Electric Fence

It is an understatement to say I’ve spent quality time around horses. I hung out at Tara Stables in New Jersey as long after a riding lesson as I could; I’d go for 1- and 2-hour rides with friends in the forests around the Delaware River Valley, and twice I went to horse camp. Because once necessitated a sequel, I suppose. I learned how to ride horses in the Western and English styles, and I took a horse riding class in college as my one and only “fun” class in 120 credits of my undergraduate career. As a tween I drew horses for hours and collected small statues of the animals in the way that kids are strangely encouraged to identify hobbies.

I even helped a horse give birth when the colt was breech, because at 14 I had gangly sticks for arms, and the large animal veterinarian directed me on how to help the baby turn, which unsurprisingly, was a messy process.

I’ve washed horses, groomed horses, shoveled horse manure (which I used at one point in a practical joke against two Syracuse U. students who were trying to put one over on me), fed horses, baled hay, been kicked, thrown, stomped on (this is the value of steel toed boots), and entered riding contests. I know how to properly saddle a horse in both styles, and take off horse shoes. In addition to plain old riding, I have logged copious hours at the track and by the age of 7 I knew how to handicap thoroughbreds and read both betting and tip sheets (even though after a decade of playing the piano, I’m still pretty rough for reading music).

After all of this vast experience, it was entirely unexpected that in showing Emile his first up-close, real life horses, I would lean too close to the electrified fence wire and shock myself. Emile, two feet behind me and secure in his $300 stroller, looked at me quizzically.

First, there is the leading edge of the shockwave, which asserts itself along with a quiet, dull buzz as some small percentage of electricity not planning on entering my body crackled into the air. Already the neurons in my brain have taken notice of the intruding sensation, and as if I’d shaken a hen house, everything in my head starts a sudden chatter.

Horses. I see horses. Not the ones in front of me, but the ones I’ve known in years past. Killer, who threw me twice in a row in the only act of defiance he knew how to execute. Sadie, a slow but sweet girl who loved having her mane brushed. Percy, who tried to wet nurse that colt I helped get born but who had no milk for him. It was equus, flashing before my eyes.

Then the words come, in the middle of this long second of electricity.

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME, screamed my brain. Flooded with external impulse, my mind didn’t have enough reserve to take stock of what was going wrong at the moment. I’d leaned on a metal gate to pet a horse named Emma, and that gate had moved five millimeters to make contact with the live wire. But I didn’t realize this just yet.

Rapid-fire, my parasympathetic nervous system sent out an urgent declaration that all limbs should move from their present position. This is the human body’s “reboot” instinct, I guess. My arms flew inward, covering my chest, and my legs pulled together, tightening up my very previously casual stance. I’m not sure, but I may have also yanked my head down onto my shoulders.

And then it was over, the current from the outside world passing into something else—electrons in the air, the grass underneath me—and I took a breath. Not exactly a cleansing breath, but it managed to transport fresh oxygen to my lungs, which were pretty pissed off about the whole event that had just occurred. Lungs are suckers for oxygen, after all.

I turned at looked at Emile, making sure that nothing adverse had taken place over in his universe. He chewed on his gums in the international baby sign of “life is okay, other than this impending tooth thing.”

Only then did I hear the giggling. Two young kids—a boy and a girl—standing by me had watched the whole show and were positively gleeful about it.

“Was that funny to you,” I asked the girl, raising an eyebrow. Oh, how nice to have control over my own muscles again.

“Yes,” she said. Then the boy chirped up.

“Do it again!”

Swimming in Ridiculousness

A good friend who lives in chichi Northern Virginia described how parents jockey for their children’s position in educational institutions, taking a comprehensive assessment approach. They quizzed instructors, toured facilities, reviewed budgets of these organizations, and commiserated with parents of alumni, all before the enrollment advocacy began. As these things go, there are only so many available spaces, and many, many applicants.

Kindergarten is rough on parents.

To me, this was lunacy. Our friend weighed what seemed like perverse, contradictory goals: push for my child to go to the “best” primary school in the district, thus entering combat with other parental units who would fight to blood to get their kid in the most special kindergarten in Arlington, or opting  for what was considered a “less than” school where some of the pressure to excel would be removed. Certainly parents are told to push for only the best options when it comes to their offspring, but then shouldn’t we question what “best” means? And many a successful adult has come out of a mediocre school and/or rough childhood. Looking only for the highest ranked education and the most resource-laden home misses the point that often, people rise above their histories. People are more than the cumulative effect of tick marks on some bucket list of success.

Yes, I have my opinions. And to put things in context, this Virginia friend, the one who sent her daughter to the less desirable school? That school handed out iPads to every student. Such is life in the wealthy counties of the state.

With a 9-month-old, even the starting gate of kindergarten is a ways off for us. But he is in his third parent/child swim class at our local YMCA. I swear on my mother we ventured into this pool adventure for a bit of bonding time, and if it encouraged some early swimming skills, all the better.

The classes were infant-focused, only half an hour long and full of songs and cuddling. I joked to friends that it took two years of fertility nonsense, 9 months of pregnancy, and 6 months of baby care to get me to justify hanging out in a warm pool twice a week, and I could have saved a lot of money and effort by just buying a hot tub for the back yard. Emile took to the water pretty quickly, for his part, enjoying what must be a super big bathtub and lots of new toys. And I was beyond charmed by watching him enjoy the water.

Our instructor was clearly in love with many of the kids in the pool, but she made me feel like Emile was her clear favorite. Such clever swimming instructors they hire at the Y. One of the youngest in the first class we entered, he had a lot to get used to–there was a constant stream of rhymes, movements, melodies, and pool props, but by the third week Emile flapped his arms in excitement as soon as he saw the gym. By the time we waded into the pool, he’d grin from ear to ear.

Despite a mean girl in our class, we squealed with delight twice a week, splashing and blowing bubbles, and before I knew it, we’d enrolled in a second swim class. Since Walla Walla is a small town, we learned that the swim instructor was the niece of a good friend, and who doesn’t love hanging out with people who genuinely love your kid? Swim class helped Emile figure out how to start crawling, and it was good socialization time for him. The mean girl was absent from the second session, too. Now I was hooked, like a desperate drug addict needs his dealer’s goods. At one point two new dad/baby teams watched Emile grab the bar at the side of the pool and start to pull himself up, and one of them audibled a “whoa.” My chest puffed out in pride I didn’t even know I had. “Oh, your baby will get there, too, you’ll see,” I said, beaming.

The start of the third session coincided with our trip to Canada last week, so we missed the first three classes. Tonight I headed in, Emile in his swim wear and me pushing his fine quality Bob stroller. I looked around for the swim instructor. She wasn’t there. Maybe I was early? I glanced at the clock. Three minutes til the start of the session. I saw a gangly young man in the water with no small child. He seemed cheery enough, but he wasn’t Meagan. I tried not to frown.

I introduced the baby to him. He seemed pleased, but not over the moon to meet Emile. Perhaps there was a shift in hiring practices at this Y. I knew the executive director, and made a note to ask him.

Only two other kids and parents were in the pool, and I didn’t know any of them. They seemed nice enough.

He let us wander around the pool for a while, with no instruction. Emile and I looked at each other. He splashed aimlessly, waiting for a familiar tune. I’d memorized all of these songs with Meagan, and for what? Daniel the new guy had a completely different repertoire. Some song about bears, another one about a lord and leading his troops. War imagery for babies? What the hell?

At minute 8 we had another period of unstructured swim time. Maybe he didn’t have enough material for a full 30 minutes, I don’t know. I walked Emile over to the bar at the side of the pool. In an instant he’d grabbed on and was doing his hand over hand maneuver. Daniel swam up to us and told Emile he was doing a good job. I stifled my aggravation, but still thought to myself, “Of course he’s doing a good job. You don’t even know, sucker!”

We did Red Rover without anyone holding the hula hoop, and even my favorite segment, the Hokey Pokey, wasn’t any fun. The class dragged on, Emile spending a lot of time gnawing on a pool toy. Geez, he can do that at home, I thought. This class sucks! I smiled too big in an attempt to mask my disappointment and apparently, rage, at poor Daniel. When it was time to dry off and put Emile into his pajamas, it dawned on me:

Good thing I don’t live in freaking Arlington, Virginia, anymore.

First Lines, Hooks, and Asking Too Much of Ten Words

First lines are the mules of literature these days—they do the heaviest lifting in a given book, needing to “hook” the reader into reading more. Writers, I’ve been told, need to show the characters, the overall context for the story, at least a glimpse of the story’s novelty, and the conflict that will drive the plot. That’s a ton of work for the start line of any marathon. Come to think of it, real starting lines only mark a space. First sentences in fiction mark well more than the small area they occupy. Blog after writing blog expresses concern for writers who send in the first several pages of their manuscript—are there enough motivators for readers right at the outset? One conference I attended had a “first page review” with a panel of agents and editors, and more often than not, the industry experts laughed at the submissions presented to them. Surely there were a few ugly dogs among the contenders, but even so, one mere sentence that is supposed to stand above all others is a precariously high bar, and it’s something that feels (to me) less about art or creative integrity to the piece, and much more about marketing standards and focus group data. Consider the following first sentences:

Call me Ishmael.
It was like so, but wasn’t.
All this happened, more or less.

Yes, I picked openings that set up the narrator (Moby Dick, Galatea 2.2, and Slaughterhouse-Five, respectively). Do they say enough as a discrete sentence? I may be a more generous reader than average, but I’m willing to stick with a text past the first 50-300 characters or 5-30 words. (Robinson Crusoe starts off with a 50+ sentence, by the way.) Some ideas may work better with a little set up and delivery. Consider:

Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty, hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to talk French. —Opening to The Luck of the Bodkins, by PG Wodehouse

Narrator, tone, level of eloquence, this sentence also reveals that the novel is in third person, the setting, and what action is about to occur. Post World War II, writers played with these assumptions about literary constructions, because I don’t know, maybe people got tired of Bloomsday parties.

But first lines are often asked to do even more than this in contemporary literature and fiction. They should show the conflict hook, or the main character’s most compelling trait, or hit readers with big emotion, in addition to all of the aspects presented in the example from Wodehouse. Often this means that there is no room for the simple sentence as the starting line.

Of course books are longer than one line. Most stories are too, Hemingway’s famous six-word story aside. Second, third, and fourth lines are critical to supporting the opening and leading more detail to the very start of the work. But thinking about what I’ve heard from editors and agents and published authors, the preponderance of interest is formed in the first dozen words, and if the audience’s attention isn’t captured then, the writer may lose them altogether. How does this sentiment or requirement affect today’s writing? We start stories with bullets, explosions, family deaths, other huge moments that are supposed to help these hooks coalesce into interest for readers. To me, it borders on formulaic, and heck, I write in-action first sentences, too, because I really want my work to get past the necessary hurdles that publishing industry professionals set out for writers. I understand that there are whole oceans of awful prose out there, from sentence number 1 to the end of a tale. Such ideas about good writing help overworked agents and editors get through their bloated in boxes. Also, if a writer is worth her salt, these are not impediments for her, as she can craft an opening that will be interesting, true to the work, and capable of including every hook and interest point needed.

And still, I think it would better fiction overall if we moved away from asking our first lines to perform such service to our stories. Yes, they should add to the story, but then again, every single sentence needs to meet that minimum bar. I just want room for the next generation of Vonneguts, Joann Russes, LeGuins, and Carvers to start stories how they think is best, now how they think an agent will think is best.

Spa Day in Radium

So let’s say I went on vacation and while looking forward to a relaxing time in a hot springs pool, I injured myself in three different ways, thus negating the healing effects of 105-degree water and instead identifying new effects of walking with a limp. But let’s also postulate that in order to combat said accident-proneness, I agreed to get a Swedish massage. Well, that would probably be memorable, too.

It really started with the couches at the condo rental, up in Radium Hot Springs, British Columbia. Maybe they were from the dreaded IKEA store, where furniture looks great until it leaves the Swede-designed showroom. The middle supports in the loveseats that marked the boundary of the living room area were three inches lower than the parts of the cushions nearest the armrests. In other words, there was no way to sit on the sofas and keep one’s hips even. We took to lying across the furniture at odd angles, vainly searching for comfort. By the end of the first day a small spot next to the small of my back began radiating pain outward, an epicenter of activity that foretold of destruction, soon to follow. I noticed I had begun walking with a hitch as the muscles nearby had held some sort of summit regarding what to do, and had agreed to stiffen up in response to the sore area. I was on my way to a full blown back ache.

Before we’d even left the states Susanne and I had talked about going to get hot stone massages. I’d only ever had a single massage experience, although it’s worth noting that when I was 25 I’d woken up one day unable to move and had scooted my way to a chiropractor by the name of Howard Johnson who had the worst toupee I’d ever seen but hands of tender gold when it came to cracking my vertebrae back into place. Howard had espoused a nasty-tasting homeopathic syrup for me to drink and I schlepped that tiny brown bottle around with me through three or four household moves, but I couldn’t bring myself to think of it as elixir. I’d sooner have licked the carbon fiber frame of my crappy Pontiac Fiero for some relief. Massages I held in only slightly higher esteem than alternative liquid remedies, or as euphemisms for illicit casual sexual encounters. I know, I know, this is a stereotype, but Six Feet Under keeps coming back to my mind when folks in earshot talk about massages.

Still, the single hot stone massage experience of my lifetime pervades my muscle memory and they often call out at me to repeat the transaction. So while relaxing at Radium, Susanne booked us for some spa extravagance, even though the on-site facility no longer does hot stone massages. Damn. I opted for the straight up Swedish massage, and Susanne the deep tissue treatment. Thinking of intense relief from knots and sore points, I walked into the spa happy to hear pan flute music. And I am no Yanni fan.

The receptionist asked for our shoe size and handed us robes and slippers. Robes? I was still in my bathing suit, a change of street clothes 5 kilometers (kilometres, even) away. What was I supposed to do with a robe?

Suffice it to say that I loathe “one size fits all” because by definition, it’s a lie. Unisex, thin synthetic, navy blue and burgundy pelts of fabric with little trailing waist cords do not have much left after covering an ass the size of mine. Such poor cousins to the Snuggie give me anxiety, and true to form, I had a mini panic attack in the men’s locker room as I took off my t-shirt from Seattle and attempted to cover my scant chest hair with the robe-thing. It didn’t even help that my slippers fit perfectly. No way could I remove my swim trunks. Would they make me take off my board shorts?

I came out of the locker room and hid behind two ficus trees while Yanni prattled on, waiting for Susanne to emerge from her room. In a couple of minutes the door opened and it was all I could do not to tackle her with my fears. Did I have to be actually naked?

“Are you naked under your robe,” I asked, trying not to tremble.

“Yes.” I could tell in her answer that she was sizing me up.

“I only have my swim suit on. Do I have to take it off?”

“No, honey, you can leave it on.” She told me not to worry and just introduce myself to the masseuse. I was grateful I’d stopped dripping, but I was probably going to get Radium water on the massage table.

I followed the employee into my private room, through a beautifully sculpted rice screen door with simple lighting designed to put me at ease. She instructed me to disrobe and lie face down. She’d give me a few minutes for this. I calculated how much less of an effect the massage would have on me what with my nervousness at DEFCON 2. I could feel muscle tissue squirming all over my back and neck. I craned my head down to undo my robe tie, and only then I remembered that I’d made a square knot instead of a bow knot, mostly because I didn’t have enough tie length for a proper bow. Now I dug into the material with my fingernails, trying to get it unknotted before anyone knocked on the door. I couldn’t even get a massage like a normal person. Finally the strings gave way and I hurled my robe onto the small guest chair, followed by my glasses.

The cotton sheet and blanket were warmed like they do for newborns on the maternity ward. Finally my heart slowed down, and I pictured the ocean, rolling with wave after wave, beating me down with quiet erosion. When the masseuse took hold of my left calf and started kneading, I was no longer on the earth. I heard gentle guitar music and I saw blue skies and high clouds and mountain streams and flocks of birds sailing on summer breezes.

I need to book another massage next week when I get home.

 

What the CeCe McDonald Sentencing Says to Me

Turns out, the 41-month sentence that CeCe McDonald plead to this spring, at the dawn of her trial for second degree manslaughter in Minneapolis, was in fact her sentence today. That’s 3-and-a-half years or so, apparently because she pulled scissors out from her purse, while running away from an attacker, and held them in front of her while he fell against her. In his words to Ms. McDonald at her plea bargain, Judge Daniel Moreno stated that in introducing scissors into the altercation–which was not the first weapon brought into play, as she’d already been lacerated with a broken beer mug–“You realize. . . you endangered other lives.”

This is the kind of twist in logic that turns the criminal justice system into a sick Mobius strip where people on the margins can’t win. In an interview with PrettyQueer.com last month, Dean Spade remarked that once she came into contact with this system, the options for justice for CeCe McDonald were extremely limited or altogether absent. That the police looked at this case and made an arrest of Ms. McDonald over and against arresting the woman who sparked the attack in the first place, Molly Flaherty (who was finally arrested last month) is testament to the inadequacy of hate crimes law and the derangement of criminal investigative process. And we thought it was all like CSI.

As I said on Facebook earlier this afternoon:

Here’s the thing: It’s not new that people harass trans women. It’s not new that trans women get singled out by police for committing some kind of infraction and arrested. It’s not new that they are forced in with non-trans men, that they get shitty legal representation, are persecuted by prosecutors and see no leniency from judges. But even with all of that not newness, I find myself completely unprepared for a trans woman or anyone to be arrested for defending herself from A NEONAZI IN A GROUP OF OTHER BIGOTS who had already caused substantial bodily injury to her. It amounts to, in my opinion, convicting someone FOR SURVIVING. And that is intolerable.

The national evidence shows that trans women are the largest single group attacked in altercations that merit hate crime status. We in the trans community gather annually to mourn our losses, reading the names of our dead at events all over North America, well out of the spotlight of Dan Savage’s It Gets Better campaign, the national media, and the monuments to other fallen individuals on the National Mall in DC. That we have so few survivors stories is horrible enough, but to watch a young, spirited person who has lived as trans for the better part of a decade be incarcerated for her very survival has got to be unacceptable for us, no matter our personal definitions of gender identity, our socioeconomic status, race, creed, political leanings, and so on. If CeCe McDonald can be forced into a terrible plea bargain during legal proceedings in which a neo-Nazi’s swastika tattoos were not allowed in as evidence because they could prejudice the jury–as if being outed by the criminal justice system and media as transsexual wouldn’t prejudice jurors against her–then we as transsexual and transgender and gender nonconforming people need to acknowledge that the police are not on our side.

I know that such a statement is obvious to many people–the trans women of color who are harassed by police in the District of Columbia (even as some other police members attempt to work against this tradition) know such things. Homeless young adults who are trans know this as they attempt to seek shelter or social safety net programs. Trans students who are bullied out of school and who face an uncertain future know this. But even if this is not news to us in part or as a whole, CeCe’s case makes the stakes so plain that the very least we can do is use her case as a rallying cry, and as a point for action. (And by saying this we also need to remember that she needs our support.)

Bias crimes against gender non-conforming people occur with alarming frequency–while we debate who among us has privilege (passing or otherwise), who may speak for whom, and what the faults of the LGB movement are when it comes to supporting transpeople, it behooves us to remember that people like Dean Schmitz and Molly Flaherty were more than willing to hate CeCe and her friends on multiple levels. They were poor, young, African American, and oh my God they did not follow gender and sexuality norms. This case is precisely why we need to form coalitions with other angry, interested parties and work to revolutionize how our policing works, how our legal system works, and how our out of control prison system injures prisoners and their families. CeCe’s sentencing says to me that many among us have shockingly little power to protect their own lives and interests. We must begin a national conversation on this lack of power and the extreme ends that these juggernaut institutions are willing to go in order to continue the marginalization of entire communities. And from open debate, we need a comprehensive agenda that the powers that be cannot ignore or eliminate.

Snappy Comebacks for Trans People

The thing about being gracious is, as soon as you let up, everyone notices. There’s no reward for seeming snappy, even if it bites at the heels of years of diplomacy and smoothed over tensions. So at the risk of letting my slip of hostility show under my skirt, let me just say that I am not a fan of the zoological presentation of transfolk as the primary means of educating the non-trans public. I am a fan of careful conversation, principled debate, and sensitive discourse when interfacing with any marginalized community.

Many of us have heard the now-standard “Trans 101″ talking points: don’t ask what surgeries we’ve had, what our former names were, or other invasive questions about our bodies you wouldn’t want to answer yourself. But there are still more questions that deflect from a helpful give-and-take between parties, or that make some of us trans people weary and exhausted, well intentioned though these questions may be. So when I’m feeling ungracious, I may use some of these following answers. Apologies in advance for my snippishness, really. But when I’m on the edge, my responses may look like this:

Question 1: What’s your story?

There are many versions of this question, so much so that they may sound like different interrogatives, but really, they boil down to this: how in hell did you realize you were the wrong gender? And they’re often predicated on this: I’ve never considered anything even remotely as weird as that! It is a bit of a puzzler, at least as far as my experience goes, but the explanations get old faster than a baked avocado. So my answer to this is: “What, you haven’t read my memoir yet?”

Now I recognize that not every trans person out there has written a memoir or book detailing the blow-by-blow process of their transition. So for those people with a better sense of how to spend their time, I offer this: “Realized I needed to have a sex change/transition/explore my gender identity, got pissed off, found a way to do it. The end.” Just don’t say the slashes out loud. It’s a rough retelling without going through the list of assorted paperwork, surgeries, medications, diagnoses, and responses from loved ones. Which is probably what that inquirer wants to know. Only we’re not required to relay all of that.

Question #2: Are you at peace now?

I was actually asked this the other night, and my snappy comeback was this: “I’m a half-Catholic, half-Jewish neurotic from New Jersey, I’m never at peace!” I followed it up with the but I have a gorgeous baby and a loving partner and a pretty cool job, so I’m happy. Because everyone around me laughed at the comeback. If they hadn’t laughed, I wouldn’t have felt the need to follow up with a real answer. Well, honestly, they’re both true answers. And no, transitioning isn’t a salve that makes all stress evaporate in the sun. I still got bills to pay.

Question #3: What’s been the hardest part about this journey?

Answering dumb ass questions like these. Next.

Question #4: Do you feel like being trans is a kind of gift, that helps you be more self-actualized?

Jung could have had a whole different kind of career if he’d just transitioned first, is that it? Actually, I kind of like the idea of the Maslow self-actualization pyramid having a big, gorgeous trans woman on top, in her favorite outfit, and laughing about the ridiculousness about the whole thing.

Look, trans people aren’t saints or shamans. We’re people who did what we needed to do for ourselves. We’re also not unrepentant narcissists–there’s no need to reverse the dial to depravity. But if you’re going to ask me if making all of the legal, medical, social, and emotional maneuvers to transition gives me some kind of special insight on life? Well, then I have this answer:

I’m very good at spotting dumb questions now, that’s for sure.

Question #5: What should be our takeaway from this conversation? Or, what one thing should I learn about trans people from interacting with you?

That we’re not geothermal power, endangered wolves, an unemployment rate, or any other “issue” that comes with a set of talking points. We’re people, with varied experiences and we disagree even with each other about what all of this means. How about you “take away” that people in a marginalized community can’t be understood in one simple way or with one specific metaphor?

Question #6: There was a time when civil rights for blacks [sic] came about, and a time for civil rights for gays. Is it your time now?

Just look at your watch, wait a second and announce it is NOW time for your civil rights. All that work on civil rights last week was just a red herring.

S. Bear Bergman and the Mighty Fine Kids’ Books

I was very fortunate to get a chunk of time from trans humorist and author S. Bear Bergman about ze’s project for young readers, Flamingo Rampant, which got some support through Kickstarter earlier this spring. With two books due to be released on June 1, Bergman answered some questions about these trans-themed picture books for kids, and what ze read as a youngster.

EM: You’ve written for LGBT audiences for years—what brings you to books for young readers?

SBB: This particular project came about because a couple of years ago, I was contacted by the kids’ camp director for the Gender Odyssey conference, Tanner, who asked me if I thought I could come up with a children’s story or two to read the kids. They wanted them to be gender-themed, but entertaining and fun—I have the clearest memory of Tanner saying to me “some of the things in camp should be abut gender, but I don’t want it to be “Welcome to camp! Let’s sing songs about our genitals!”

I said I would give it a try. And in a couple of months, I had produced these two stories.

EM: Tell me about your project—what’s the story, who are the characters? What kinds of books are these?

SBB: THE ADVENTURES OF TULIP, BIRTHDAY WISH FAIRY follows title-character Tulip as he deals with the birthday wishes of all the nine-year-olds in North America. Somewhat reminiscent of the Disney film Prep & Landing, The Adventures of Tulip, Birthday Wish Fairy gives an inside look into what exactly happens to all those wishes, what Wish Fairies eat for lunch, and what kinds of tools they’re issued. When a wish Tulip is unfamiliar with crosses his desk, from a child known as David who wishes to live as Daniela, he seeks the wise counsel of the Wish Fairy Captain and learns some new Wish Fairy Skills (while also introducing the concept of trans-identified children in a friendly, sympathetic way). Tulip gets in a little hot water, but ultimately his compassion and thoughtfulness win the day, while serving as a model for readers.

BACKWARDS DAY, set on the planet Tenalp, introduces us to a world where there are seventeen seasons, including one where bubblegum falls from the sky for three days and a single day when everything—everything everywhere—is backwards. Andrea looks eagerly forward to Backwards Day every year, so she can turn into a boy for the day. But one year she doesn’t turn along with everyone else. She’s miserable. The very next day, however, she turns into a boy—and stays that way! He’s delighted, but his parents are distressed, and take him to the big city to consult with Backwardsologists. When they finally figure out what’s happened, the miracles of Backwards Day are fully revealed to the reader.

[image error]EM: What appeals to you most about working on picture books?

SBB: I really enjoyed working with both the illustrators, and watching things I had dreamed up come to life on the page. I’m not a very visual person—I really do live in the world of words—so as odd as it sounds I had no real concept of what any of these people or places looked like. It was fabulous and terrifying to just turn over the text and watch it all take shape. And the results are amazing.

EM: How does this fit in with your other work and your mission as a writer?

SBB: My mission. Oh, boy. I wish I had a Mission™. Mostly what I have are a lot of big ideas and a reasonable portion of ego, enough so I think other people will be interested in what I have to say. I like to talk and teach and tell stories.

Though, being serious, I do also want to make room in the landscape of culture for trans and gender-independent and gender queer people. And my husband works with a lot of gender-independent kids, and now I have an actual, awesome, kid, and so picture books—with which I am newly but thoroughly enmeshed—seemed like a way to go about it.

EM: What’s your strategy for addressing queer and trans issues in these books?

SBB: Tulip and Backwards Day are both fun stories, where something gender-y happens. I think activism can be fun, and frolicsome, and that sometimes a spoonful of sugar distracts everyone from the fact that there’s medicine happening in the first place, if Mary Poppins will forgive me.

And storytelling is a very old and very effective form of combining entertainment with values-transmission. We tell stories in part because storytelling is a lot of damn fun, but also in part because it has historically been a way to encourage behaviors we value and discourage behaviors we don’t, and to give cultural messages about belonging and validity and desires and all manner of things. We’ve more or less abandoned this important task to TV in the last generation, and they have taken the mantle on their shoulders and provided us with such faultless moral compasses as A Very Kardashian Wedding and The Real Housewives of Orange County.

None of which I like. Or even, in most ways, approve of. But I have always been incredibly hard on people who complain without trying to do anything about it, with whatever tools they have available to them. So, here I am, and I know good and well I’m paddling against the tides. I don’t care, though. There will be some families, in some places, into whose hands these books will find their way and be of value.

Rabbi Tarfon, who lived two thousand years ago, writes in the Talmud: ”It is not incumbent upon you to complete the work, but neither are you at liberty to desist from it.” That seems exactly right to me.

EM: What messages are you hoping to convey to readers, and the people who may be reading them aloud to young people?

SBB: I want to normalize trans experiences for young kids. I can hear the Traditional Values Coalition people sharpening their pikes even as I type that, but it’s true. I also don’t know how else to help protect trans people, especially my trans sisters of colour who bear the brunt of transphobic violence, but through education.

So it occurs to me that maybe this is one way to use my privilege: to write these books, and give a ton of them away, and try to remake the world a little bit so that my son’s generation will have a different, much more warm and welcoming (or at least not homicidal, that would be a nice start) attitude towards trans*-identified, genderqueer, gender-creative people.

By the way, I am committed to giving a lot of books away. If people have suggestions about libraries or schools that could use a copy, please contact the librarian there and ask them to send an email to library at flamingorampant.com requesting one. Please don’t just send an email asking to have one sent; one of my pieces of learning in this endeavor has been that unsolicited books sent to libraries sometimes get sold in the annual booksale instead of added to the collection. So, it’s a great help to me and to the kids and families who are patrons of your library if you play Library Liason first.

EM: What was on your bookshelf when you were a kid? Are you trying to emulate any of them in these projects?

SBB: Everything. I was a crazy voracious reader. But the earliest books I really remember reading weren’t picture books, so it’s hard to say. My parents tell me that my favorite books as a little little person were I’ll Teach My Dog 100 Words (which I still love and read to my son all the time), and Tikki Tikki Tembo (which is so breathtakingly racist I won’t keep it in the house). But no, I wouldn’t say these books are like either of those.

EM: What else do you want people to know about these books? And where can folks purchase them?

[image error]SBB: I want people to know that they’re fun, that they’re good stories. My guiding principle the whole way was that I wanted to create stories I could imagine a kid requesting again and again at bedtime. And based on my test audience, I think I have succeeded (at least for some kids).

Books will be for sale starting 1 June. We’ll be selling them online through Amazon’s fulfillment system (but the money comes to us, not to them, except for the shipping fees), and in lots of independent bookstores as we can arrange things with them. Please feel free to encourage your local, independent bookstore to contact Flamingo Rampant if they want us and we haven’t reached out to them yet.

The Inconsequential Days of a Mostly Unknown Writer

My writing has been a struggle for the last two months, what with my office needing significant chunks of my time, and an active baby who requires I chase him around the house giggling for hours at a stretch.  Sometimes when I sit down to type–much less write–I wind up staring at the keyboard through two old episodes of Law & Order, and then I need to get started on something else like dinner or another round of The Baby Chase. Lately my sleep number has been out of whack, putting another limitation on my writing time, as I contort myself to find a position that doesn’t sting my hip socket.

And yet there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This Friday we will no longer be understaffed at work. Emile is sleeping better through the night, and I have hope that balance will stop by for a long visit in my routine. I will be faced with a decision of which writing project to ramp back up for headway-making.

There’s the YA novel about time travel with LGBT themes that has come close to representation twice now but that needs some work in the transitions (sic) between eras.
There’s the YA novel about parallel universes with trans themes that is in the first draft. I’ve done all the work on plotting and characters, but I could stand to push both of these efforts deeper. And I’m at 18,000 words, so I’ve barely cracked past the beginning of the story.
There are two novels for adults that I’ve plotted out and finished the back story but that haven’t seen me start writing. Those are probably going to stay back-burner until next winter, in all probability.
There’s the sequel to Bumbling that my publisher would like to see me start, but other than this blog I’ve done no writing on it, nor have I mapped out the scenes or characters.

I always have a glut of small projects and/or writing commitments that I can crunch through while I’m working on a more long-term book. I’m happy to have the 500-800 word article so I can get momentum going and keep my computer warm.

I don’t think these balancing acts and writing priorities are what most people have in mind when they think of working writers. We’re supposed to be lying back on a fluffy couch dictating our next commercial success to our assistant, or bent over a half-finished bottle of scotch, pouring out our hostility into an opus of family and war stories. But I remember something Bob Mayer said to us emerging writers a couple of years ago at the Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association conference: Picture where you’ll be in 3 years. In 5 years, as a writer. Have clear goals. I tried to summon my most optimistic ideas about my own work, and I came up with this–Publish a book for LGBT readers in 2 years. Hit bestseller status in 5 years.

Optimistic and Impossible get mixed up in my head sometimes, so that’s where the bestseller thing comes from, I’m sure. Then again I did get the memoir out to readers in my time frame. But I know, I can’t even get an agent to sign on to my time travel novel. Well, not yet. Successful writers the continent over have stories of rejection after rejection. Some of them for ten or fifteen years, and still, they keep writing. I try to summon them when my avid pessimist is dancing in the room with me, which is a lot less like dancing and more like being pulled around the ballroom by a drunk uncle. The trick for these intrepid writers is that they keep coming up with new material, improving on their last set of words.

So maybe I just answered my own question. Leave the time-travel aside and get back into the swing on the parallel universe novel. It really is a great story, promise. I haven’t fallen in love with it as hard as I did with The Unintentional Time-Traveler, but I will. I always do. That’s part of the pull of writing–I can meet new people, even if they’re imaginary and even if they’re of my own creation. I try not to fall in love with my language, because I think readers can sense such things, and it tends to come across like narcissism. But my characters? I can get down with a little love fest there.

These days people I know see me writing and they keep their conversations with me brief, either because I’m not out in public enough to remain interesting to them, or they think I think I’m a big deal and won’t have anything to say to them, or because they know my minutes of free time are numbered. I hope that as balance resumes in my life–even if it’s calibrated differently than pre-baby and pre-job–I’ll have more time for interacting with my fellow humans. I enjoy down time and relaxing with friends. Please don’t mind me if I seem unduly excited to be typing away.

I love text messages about meetups, and I just adore a nice beer at the end of a writing session. When I’m not chasing Emile through the dining room, that is.