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It was by reading that I learned about fluidity. If Dumas could come up with Milady, that had to mean there was a woman inside him, right? If he could breathe life into such a woman, strong-willed, independent, a fighter, then maybe I … The more I read, the more I built myself a bubble where I was allowed to dream of being someone else.
The days played out from beaches to pools, from naps to surfing sessions. Except I didn’t know how to surf. I was scared of the waves. I was scared of the open sea. I’m like my mother: I’m scared of everything. I can feel my fear of the open sea returning now.
One summer afternoon when I was ten years old, I was sprawled out on the living room sofa in the Créteil apartment. I had one eye on the TV and the other on the latest Gaston Lagaffe comic book. Basically, I was bubbling, as my grandma would say. Bubbling means being in your bubble. It’s dreaming with your eyes open. After walking, dear David, what I love to do most is bubble. It’s impossible to act before you’ve bubbled. That’s actually why in martial arts you never fight before meditating.
First of all: This is a mutiny. And if our mutiny is to succeed, I need to really name things, without digressions. If I don’t, you won’t malfunction. You won’t move. You won’t deviate from your certainties. So, here it goes: I’m trans. As in transgression. I’ve broken the genders, I’ve evaded the codes, I’ve forgotten the orders of men. I’m trans. As in translation. I’ve shifted the elements that constitute my person from one state to another. My geometry has been variable. I’m trans. As in transmutation. My life is alchemy. I’ve turned lead into gold. I know the formula the magician’s
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Later on, when I faced dirty looks from the mean and ignorant, I would use the memories of those moments with my girlfriends as a shield. The sisters who we choose form the strongest of bonds. I miss those moments of collusion, as imperfect and bittersweet as they were. If I throw it all away tonight, maybe it’s so I can find them.
As for me, I’m angry at my body for having served me so poorly. It’s been the too-imperfect home of my self. I would have liked to move. But my lease is for life.
We’re free to cultivate it or to leave it fallow. I haven’t cultivated my orchard, my garden, my imperfect metaphor. For a long time I was angry at my body. But maybe my body should be the one resenting me. Untended gardens should have the right to blame deleterious gardeners. I didn’t protect mine from the elements. I’ve deprived it of sun. I’ve deprived it of heat. I’ve also deprived it of water and the steel of my will. If my body is an orchard, maybe I’m the weed. And to think that I could have been a flower …
Secrecy is heavy. Their scruples were too heavy to bear. They prevented me from giving them what they wanted. No man was ever proud of me. No man ever presented me to his family, to his friends, with pride. Women did. Because of men, I was often ashamed, but thanks to women, I was also proud. Proud like a man who enters a party with the woman he loves and admires on his arm; proud like a woman who feels supported by other women.
I hate to admit it to myself, but I did enjoy some aspects of the years I spent under your yoke, you predictable algorithm. Those years of anonymity, of relative normality. To rid myself of the shame, all I had to do was disappear. To erase myself from the world, as I did to join you. I thought that by stepping out of the margins, by bending to your will, I was buying myself safety. But surviving is not the same as living. My survival killed me slowly. I’m not made for the shadows.
Since that day, I stopped being afraid of my anger. Until then, I had buried it, I’d denied myself the right to feel it. Anger reminded me of my image as a man; I didn’t understand yet that anger has no gender. Anger is a universal right. It is not for men to define. My sisters deserve their anger. I deserved mine.
It’s 7:40 p.m. I’m falling behind on my rituals. You see, at 7:30 p.m., I usually pay my debt. The tremendous love of a mother isn’t free. It has a price: this dull pain we live with every day from the day she dies to the day we die. Undoubtedly, it’s in order to finally settle this debt that those who are dying whisper “Mom” at the moment they depart for the afterlife or the void. When the emptiness begins to set in, around 7:15 p.m., and becomes unbearable at 7:30 p.m., I recite the Hail Mary over and over, as if I were praying with a rosary. What I mean is: Hail Mom, full of grace. I’m very
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Have you noticed, David, that we don’t give names to winds anymore? Hurricanes, typhoons, tropical storms all get names. But these new winds that carry with them the stifling heat of the South or the crash of the glaciers in the North, these winds that howl in our streets, that tear off the branches of the trees, that make the skyscrapers sway, that rough up your thousand antennas, these winds are anonymous. That’s because they’re orphans, I think. No one wants to claim authorship of the bitter, salty, nasty winds that terrorize today’s children.
Doesn’t that piss you off? That it’s others who decide what form we can take, that it’s their laws, their phobias, and their desires that shape the outlines of our place in the world? We conformed because it was the only way to survive, that’s all.
I have chosen my side, even before I completely exist. But above all, I hope to avenge all those hes, shes, and theys who have been made to disappear by those bastards. Here I am: a vibrant anomaly, liberated and indignant, determined to be driven by the hope of seeing you and your friends be snuffed out, David. My name is V.A.L.I.D. Here I come./