Little Blue Encyclopedia: (for Vivian)

by Hazel Jane Plante

We both admitted to feeling like monsters some of the time. If people question your right to exist, strangers give you stink eye, and men who kill trans women aren’t held accountable, how can you not feel like there’s something wrong with you or that the world wants you to disappear or die?

When you said something amusing, Vivian often laughed just a little too loud. I’ll admit that more than a few times I jotted funny things down so I wouldn’t forget to tell her about them later.

I’ve always been shy and never want to cross any lines. I’m the sort of person who will get cozy in the bathtub and never want to get out. Even making friends has always seemed like magic when I’ve seen it happen or it’s happened to me. But it’s never felt like a magic that I have any control over.

I hadn’t made out with anyone for months and I’d really missed being touched. A vague emotional ache I’d had seemed to blossom and melt, blossom and melt. I hadn’t really noticed the ache until now. It was like turning your head and noticing something in a blind spot that had been there for a long time. It was like diving into a pool and realizing you hadn’t swum in way too long and loved the freedom of being in the water. Scratch that. It was so much better than swimming. I felt myself pulled into a rush of lips and curves and hands and softness and desire. There are so many delightful things bodies can do together. We did some of them.

if you wanna know why i’m called what i’m called it’s because of primal scream’s PERFECT little pop song with the perfect title → velocity girl but it’s also because some girls are quicker than others some girls need to reach escape velocity to break through the atmosphere and i am one of those lightning quick girls i’m one of those velocity girls

It’s hard to think of a more fitting toast than raising a glass to the people we still love who are no longer with us.

At your funeral, I didn’t say anything and I’ve always regret ted it. I owe you a eulogy. Oh, Viv. I always thought you would die before me. You were willing to take chances that I wasn’t, to do things I wouldn’t even contemplate. Your past was darker, your ghosts more insistent. You were unshuttered. You nuzzled life. I had a crush on you the size of Greenland. You were an efferves-cent badass. I miss you. Dot misses you. Teddy misses you. Everyone who loved you or knew you misses you. I’m still melancholic as fuck and I’ll probably always have a splinter of sadness that just won’t leave me. But I’m keeping shards of you in the world by thinking about you, talking about you, writing about you. The joy of having known you is starting to paint over the pain of having lost you. And when I miss you most, I can absorb myself in something you adored. Suede. Little Blue. A houndstooth trench coat. And, voila, to some small degree, there you are with me. Just like your tattoo of the Bride of Frankenstein. “She’s alive! Alive!” You were wild and beautiful and alive. And I still love you with my queer little heart.